


Ice and the Wasteland

by SaigonTimeMD



Series: Tales of the Overwatch [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Baking, Canon-Typical Violence, Car Chases, Comrades in Arms, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Implied Fareeha "Pharah" Amari/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler - Freeform, Implied Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada, Implied Reinhardt Wilhelm/Ana Amari, Implied Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes - Freeform, Implied Widowmaker | Amelie Lacroix/Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Motorcycles, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaigonTimeMD/pseuds/SaigonTimeMD
Summary: Two madmen who should've died face-down in the searing sand of the Australian Outback decades ago meet the Ice Queens of Overwatch. Hilarity, feelings, and mass destruction ensues. Now you'll finally find out what happens when two unstoppable forces meet two immovable objects.





	1. The Offer

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look; this is going to be a story about Roadhog and Junkrat falling in love with Zarya and Mei (and vice versa) as Overwatch is getting rebuilt/reformed, and what happens after. I find Roadhog/Zarya and Junkrat/Mei to be really good balances to each other, both personality-wise and mechanics-wise, and I'm really excited about showcasing them together. My goal is to keep the relationship/romance elements central, but also do some worldbuilding of my own canon as far as things at Overwatch are concerned. I'll level with you: at this very moment, I do not know how crazy this is going to get, but we're both along for the ride now. If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch).
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                “Fang it, Roadie! Filth’s right on us!”

                Roadhog twisted the throttle until his wrist hurt, and the 5,000cc engine between his legs bellowed like the gates of Hell flung wide, shattering the windows of parked cars as they hurtled down the street. The high-framed chopper, a scrapyard monstrosity cobbled together from the corpses of two dozen lesser cycles, bore no manufacturer’s logo or license plate, but the words ‘ _REX PORCOS_ ’ were scrawled across the gigantic gas-tank in bright red spray paint. When the bike, if it could be called that, idled, it sounded like an elephant trying to cross hot coals, and when it was pushed to its limits, people nearby stopped covering their ears and started looking for a fallout shelter. At that moment, Londoners halfway across the city (those who were still awake at four in the morning) wondered if they were experiencing an earthquake – or at least, they would have, if not for the cacophony of wailing sirens and myriad detonations that could only have meant one thing: Junkrat and Roadhog were back in London.

                Junkrat, bracing himself by his good foot on the back end of the sidecar, cackled wildly and sent another five fragmentation grenades clattering down the street towards the two-dozen police hover-cars in close pursuit. The projectiles briefly bounced off of the smoking, shattered concrete left in the chopper’s wake before chiming like outdated alarm clocks and exploding in bright orange blazes that lit up the late night, sending asphalt, parking meters, and cobblestones flying.

                “Watch the blasts! Buyer said—”

                “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Junkrat groaned, “’Nobody gets hurt.’” He slammed another boxful of grenades into the launcher and let one fly low. It exploded underneath a parked town-car, flipping it partially into the road. One of the MPS interceptors swerved to avoid it and instead slammed headfirst into a streetlight; another blue-and-white pursuit vehicle immediately pulled up to take its place at the front of the pack. “Just keeping’em at a distance is all!”

                “Uh-huh.”

                Roadhog, already well-acquainted with the MPS’ pursuit strategies, had kept mostly to the side-streets: the blue-and-white hover-cars were built for running down targets on open thoroughfares, but they struggled enough on the two-lane roads without having to dodge successive waves of grenades. Unfortunately for the two bandits, the row of pursuit vehicles were inching closer between every salvo, and a quick look over his shoulder told the towering bandit that they’d be within firing distance uncomfortably soon. Catching sight of a street sign, he gunned the engine again, pushing the chopper up to speeds he wouldn’t have been all that excited about even on open road.

                “Sit down,” Roadhog growled, trying to be heard over the engine roar.

                “C’mon, coppers! I got enough boom for _and_ your next a’ kin!”

                A grenade detonated mid-air, and Roadhog felt the heat on his back as the chopper jerked forward.

                _Fire burning above. Face down, sand in ventilator, can’t breathe, can’t breath, can’t—_

                He slammed his forehead with his fist and the memory receded into the pain.

                “Sit _down_.” The larger bandit brought a weighty hand onto Junkrat’s shoulders and shoved him into the sidecar. “Buckle up.”

                “Alright, alright, you mug. Just havin’ a bit of f—”

                A bullet took off a tuft of Junkrat’s already-patchy hair, and the younger Junker dove into the sidecar’s recesses with a yelp, burying himself amidst greasy bits of scrap, discarded bomb parts, and a sleek, silver suitcase. It wasn’t exactly buckling up, but it would do. Roadhog felt little stabbing sensations on his back and arms as the pursuers, deprived of the more dangerous target, switched their aim to him, but the bullets only grazed his skin; Australia had changed him, changed both of them, mostly for the worse, but sometimes for the better. Another street sign flew past and he quickly eased off the throttle, sending the chopper falling back towards the MPS vehicles, who stopped firing long enough to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. Seeing the procession of pursuit hover-cars turn red with brake-lights, Roadhog gunned the engine again, buying the two bandits nearly twice the distance. It was a risky move, and not one the fuzz would fall for a second time, but it only needed to work once. While they were still far ahead, Roadhog quickly switched the chain-spool to a handle mounted on the side of the chopper, then grabbed the hook in his left hand.

                “Roadie, what’s going on?” Junkrat asked, cautiously peeking up from the sidecar.

                “Hold on.”

                “Got it!”

                Just as the muzzle-flashes began to spit out small calibers from the front pursuit vehicles again, Roadhog jammed the brakes and hurled the hook to the side, latching onto a passing streetlight. The chain pulled tight on the spool and the chopper swung around to the left, sliding nicely into the alley with only a minimum of sparks and squealing. The hook rattled back from the now-bent lamppost, and Roadhog chuckled as it returned to his hand with a satisfyingly tactile _thump_. The MPS pursuers slammed on their brakes, but they couldn’t have fit in the alley even if they’d made the turn; a din of whining repulsors, crunching metal, and broken sirens was the only thing that followed the two former Junkers down the narrow backstreet.

                “Ripper of a stunt, mate!” Junkrat climbed back up into the sidecar’s seat and whistled at the swiftly-disappearing pileup at the far end of the alley.

                “Thanks.”

                Junkrat ran his hands through what was left of his hair, and a rare, thoughtful expression came over his face.

                “You know, that worked a lot better than when you—”

                The younger of the two bandits didn’t need to see Roadhog’s expression through his mask to feel the withering glare, and he promptly clammed up – at least for the moment.

                Temporarily off the grid, the MPS would be forced to track them by sound and heat, and Roadhog wasn’t about to let them do either. His large, black-nailed thumb flipped open a switch-cover on the handlebars with a stenciled picture of a blindfolded pig on it and pressed the red button inside. The chopper’s speed and noise immediately dropped as the bike’s automotive footprint shrank from a Volskaya Industries construction vehicle to a rather large moped; the motorcycle bucked reluctantly, champing at the bit, but Roadhog resisted the urge to open it up again. Their objective was close, too close now to risk discovery.

                After an agonizingly slow half-hour of puttering down black back-alleys, hiding in the shadows of skyscrapers, and dashing across traffic just before the light changed, the Junkers finally arrived at their destination: a nondescript warehouse on the banks of the Thames. Roadhog carefully parked around the side, well out of view of the loading area’s single lamp, and they piled out. Junkrat handed the silver suitcase to Roadhog. It felt weightless in his hand.

                “What’d you take out?”

                “Nothin’, mate.” Junkrat shrugged. “Thought it was empty myself when I first snagged it from that old bird on the corner.”

                Roadhog grunted ambivalently. Size and weight only mattered to the amateur and the stupid when it came to loot; a thumbdrive in the right hands could be more valuable than an entire truckload of cash. He still thought about opening it, if only to see what they might be potentially bargaining with if the buyer wasn’t as forthcoming with their pay as he’d promised, but he saw the biometric locks on either side. It wouldn’t be impossible to crack without the right fingerprint, but it _would_ be loud, and not much of the suitcase would be left afterwards. He scanned the surrounding warehouse roofs and stacked boxes for any outside observers, but saw no one. The chase notwithstanding, this had gone smoother than any past score, and it worried gigantic bandit; quiet usually meant an ambush.

                _Going in blind, eh Mako?_

_Just like every other time, Fif._

                Roadhog shook his head and pushed the rusted warehouse door open, the metal groaning against the distant noise of wailing sirens and city life. The warehouse was dimly lit by a central light, with boxes haphazardly stacked about to create a clearing in the middle occupied only by a simple metal table, and the older bandit’s scrap gun was out of its holster before he set a single foot inside. Junkrat followed suit, aiming his grenade launcher at any shadow that seemed to move; the gears in his prosthetic arm and leg clicked as they tightened, anticipating a fight.

                “Don’t like this,” Roadhog whispered as quietly as his sepulchral voice would allow.

                “Me neither; I swear, if this is _another_ setup, I’ll—”

                “It’s a good thing it isn’t a setup, then,” a haggard voice from the far end of the warhouse called. “At least, not the kind you’re used to.”

                A red visor lit up in the darkness opposite the two bandits, and a lone figure stepped into the light. He stood a little over six feet tall, with pale skin and receding white hair; a blue-black ballistic mask covered his face, but the end of a nasty scar jutted up to the left across his forehead from beneath the red targeting visor. He wore a blue-and-white motorcycle jacket underneath a series of modular, military-issue utility pouches and strapped-on Helix casings, grey fatigues, and outdated combat greaves. His hands were covered in red-armored leather gloves, the ballistic plating cracked and chipped from years of use. There was an advanced pulse rifle, gleaming blue and white, strapped to his back, and a nondescript, carbon-black sidearm holstered on his right hip.

                “Wait a tick, I know you,” Junkrat said, squinting warily at the old soldier. “Seen you on the news – when they ain’t talkin’ about us, anyway.”

                “76,” Roadhog murmured.

                “What’s trombones got to do with it?” Junkrat asked, visibly confused.

                “ _Soldier_ 76, actually,” the older man added, and he approached table. Roadhog cautiously holstered his scrap gun. “Do you have the case?”

                “Depends, mate,” Junkrat answered as Roadhog set the silver case on the table. “You got the cash?”

                “No. I’ve got something better.”

                The scrap gun flew back out of its holster, and Junkrat had primed a concussion mine before 76 finished his sentence.

                “I _knew_ this was a bloody trap, mate! Every time we do somethin’ for somebody else, it always goes pear-shaped!” he spit, leveling his grenade launcher at the gleaming red visor in front of him.

                “I’m not here to fight,” 76 said, raising his hands but not sounding the slightest bit worried.

                “Yeah? Well, if you ain’t here to pay up, you’re here to get _blown_ up!”

                Roadhog could see the muscles beneath the Soldier’s jacket tense, and remembered the news stories about him. Entire military bases taken down by one untraceable, unstoppable man; not someone to be trifled with, even by the two of them. If he didn’t steer the conversation elsewhere, bombs would start flying either way.

                “Five million was the offer. What’re you offering now?”

                “Roadie, we ain’t negotiatin’ with this cobweb-coughing c—”

                “A choice.” 76’s answer was unusual enough to give both bandits pause. Sensing their hesitation, he continued. “A choice between what you are now and what you _could_ be.”

                “Little vague, mate,” Junkrat said, motioning with his still-raised grenade launcher. “Care to elaborate?”

                “The world’s a dangerous place,” Soldier 76 began.

                “You don’t say?” Junkrat nudged Roadhog with a grin. Both men ignored him.

                “It’s getting worse every day. Civil unrest, terrorist bombings, whole cities brought down by hacking collectives, private wars waged between mega-corporations bigger than countries with civilians caught in the crossfire… the world’s headed towards a place it hasn’t been in over thirty years.”

                “Well, maybe some of us _like_ a little chaos in our lives, huh?” Junkrat grinned, and patted his detonation pack. Soldier 76 sighed and turned to Roadhog.

                “He isn’t old enough to remember. But you are.”

                Junkrat looked between the two older men and spat on the ground.

                “Listen here, you cheeky bastard, he works for _me_ , so either drop the speech and cut to the chase or piss off!”

                “Overwatch is reforming and we want you to be a part of it.”

                The three men stood in silence for a long minute as the words sank in. The quiet was finally broken by Junkrat’s maniacal laugh as he dropped his grenade launcher and doubled over.

                “Overwatch? _The_ Overwatch? The Omnic-huggin’ ‘saviors of humanity’ that went extinct ‘cause they couldn’t keep their sticky little fingers out of everyone’s pie? Those arseholes?”

                “We have state of the art—”

                Junkrat grabbed the suitcase off of the table and walked towards the door.

                “Roadie, we’re bloody done here. Shoot him or don’t, it don’t matter to me. Maybe we can pawn this thing on the Black once we get back home.” Roadhog shook his head and turned away, holstering the scrap gun. “Can’t believe we went through all this shit for some whacker with a job offer. I coulda been blowin’ up those pigs the whole time!”

                “There’s going to be a second Omnic Crisis.”

                Junkrat and Roadhog stopped in their tracks.

                “What?” Roadhog asked, his guttural voice masking his sudden hesitation.

                “Not just the little skirmishes going on in Russia; I'm talking about a worldwide disaster. It’s not a matter of if anymore, just a matter of when. Omniums are going dark across the world, protests are turning violent, bureaucrats are passing laws they don’t understand, and there are forces waiting to take advantage of the coming conflict that are much worse than a resurgent Omnic war machine. Most countries are too scared to connect the dots, and they won’t be prepared when the shit hits the fan. Overwatch _will_ be, but not without your help.”

                By the time Soldier 76 had finished speaking, Junkrat and Roadhog had walked back to the table.

                “We’re in,” Roadhog said definitively.

                “We are _not_ in,” Junkrat sputtered. “ _I_ am the bossman, and _I_ say that we are not in, you dill.” He turned back to Soldier 76. “So what are you actually offering? And don’t say ‘a choice’ again, because I _will_ shoot you with this grenade launcher.”

                Behind his mask, 76 smiled.

                “As I said before, we have state of the art facilities: laboratories, armories, firing ranges, gyms, danger rooms with automated training regimens to sharpen every combat skill, international transportation that can get you anywhere in the world in an hour or less, warm beds, and hot meals any time day or night. There’s also an Olympic-size swimming pool.”

                “A swimming pool?” Junkrat and Roadhog repeated in unison.

                “I was specifically told to mention that. Yes, a swimming pool.”

                “Why us?” Roadhog asked.

                “Because you know chaos. You know how to cause it, how to read it, how to control it, and, ostensibly, how to prevent it.”

                “Don’t have a lot of experience with that last one,” Junkrat said, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck.

                “You’ll get it. The two of you already work well as a team, so you’re ahead of the curve in squad operations, and you have more experience in taking down large groups of Omnics than most of our current roster combined.”

                Junkrat stared off and scratched his chin like he always did whenever he was thinking harder than usual. Roadhog rested his scrap gun on his shoulder. After a moment, the younger bandit’s orange eyes brightened and flicked up.

                “Alright mate, say we _do_ join your little club. What’s in it for us? What kinda’ salary are we talkin’?”

                “Not a damn cent.” Junkrat’s jaw fell slightly agape. “But you two don’t really care about money, do you? I’ve read your files; everything you steal you either throw away, spend on useless toys—” Here, Junkrat and Roadhog both chuckled, “—or transform into some kind of weapon. You could’ve set yourselves up for life on a private island if you’d ransomed the Crown Jewels, but you took pictures with it on a disposable cell-phone and then gave it to a homeless kid.”

                “Told you we should’ve sold it,” Roadhog grumbled.

                “Eh.”

                “You two don’t give a damn about the money; it’s the challenge that keeps you coming back. Well, you want a challenge, Overwatch will give you one. Multiple deployments every week, usually into hostile territory, always against long odds. Just you standing alone between the world and the monsters who want to set it ablaze.”

                Junkrat was deep in thought again, and Roadhog strongly considered just knocking him out and taking the deal. 76 was right; Junkrat’s world had almost always been fire and blood, but Roadhog, in his more introspective moments, faintly remembered a blue time when a lilting voice called him by another name. Something within him, buried without a name under layers of rubber and steel and rage, stirred in its deathlike sleep.

                “At the very least,” 76 interjected, sensing the negotiation had reached a tipping point, “You won’t have to run from the police anymore.”

                “No more dodging the filth, eh?” Junkrat asked, his expression lightening.

                “Overwatch members get their records scrubbed – although we’ll probably hold off on deploying you two back to London any time soon. So what do you say? Ready to try being the good guys for a change?”

                _Mako, what the hell have you done?!_

                “Tried goin’ legit once before,” Junkrat explained, his eyes narrowing. “Didn’t work out too well.”

                Roadhog nodded gravely.

                “If you’re referring to the incident in Sydney, I can guarantee you we’re nothing like Hyde Global.”

                “Prove it,” Roadhog growled. The Soldier cracked his neck.

                “For one thing,” he began, taking off his gloves as he talked, “Overwatch doesn’t have shareholders it can scam for insurance money. We’re self-sufficient, and the only funding we take is what we repossess from the bastards we shut down.” He leaned forward, placing his bare hands on the table: they were calloused and scarred, pockmarked by grazing bullets and glancing knife slashes, the knuckles slightly uneven from broken bones set in the middle of combat. “More importantly,” he continued, “Every member of Overwatch is willing to fight, bleed, and die to protect this world and the people in it. I’ve done all three, and I still came back for more. Think you’re any tougher?”

                Junkrat glanced at Roadhog, who crossed his arms expectantly, then turned back to the Soldier.

                “Well, like Roadie said,” Junkrat answered, his long face breaking into a toothy grin, “we’re in.”

                “Just what I wanted to hear,” 76 said, and he pulled a tiny remote from his pocket. At the press of a button, the back of the warehouse opened up to the cool, extraordinarily early London morning, revealing a gleaming white dropship hovering soundlessly above the Thames, its loading ramp extended to the dock.

                “Holy dooley.”

                “Wait, if this whole thing was a setup,” Roadhog said, “then what’s in the suitcase?”

                “A GPS tracker,” 76 replied with a shrug. “That little switch on your bike doesn’t work on traffic cameras, so we had to follow your position and shut them off manually.”

                “We?” Roadhog questioned.

                “Someone had to watch over you while the Strike Commander practiced his speech.”

                A short, hooded figure dropped down from the catwalk above and swung her sniper rifle over her shoulder. She was clad in a grey cloak and so many pouches and cartridges that it was difficult for the Junkers to figure out where she ended and her gear began. Her skin was the color of sand at night, and her classically regal beauty – her prominent nose, her wide chin, her broad smile – had been dimmed but little by the lines and marks of age across her face. She wore a patch over her right eye, but her left eye, almond and golden, was encircled by an ‘Eye of Horus’ tattoo. Lazy silver-white bangs hung over her black-and-blue headband, and a braid of the same color wrapped around her chin.

                “Hey, you’re the lady with the suitcase,” Junkrat exclaimed.

                “I know,” she said, patting him on the head. “Thank you for being so careful with me when you stole it; I’m not as young as I once was.”

                Junkrat turned red and stared at the ground.

                “Gentlemen, meet Ana Amari; she’s our long-range combat and field medicine specialist.”

                “Wait, you’re a sniper _and_ a doc? How’s that work?” Junkrat asked, scratching an empty patch on his head. Ana chuckled and tapped her rifle.

                “If you get hurt, I shoot at you until you start moving again.”

                “Roadie, that almost sounds like—”

                “Strike Commander?” Roadhog asked, cutting off his companion’s question.

                “Strike Commander Jack Morrison,” the old soldier explained, taking his ballistic mask off to reveal a scarred-but-still-handsome face with brilliant blue eyes and a Boy Scout smile. “Sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger business; sometimes it’s easier to get things done as a ghost," he said with a cough. "I’m sure you understand.”

                Roadhog nodded respectfully.

                “We have many skillsets,” Ana interjected, “but none of them involve valet parking, so why don’t you be dears and load up that bike of yours into the ship.”

                “Unless you’re planning on driving to Gibraltar?” Morrison added.

                “Gibraltar?” the two bandits asked in unison.

                “Gibraltar.”

+++

                “Just a tick,” Junkrat asked through a mouthful of basbousa, “were you watching us the whole time from up there in the dark?”

                “That’s right, dear,” Ana said, handing him another piece from the plastic tray. “I’m relieved the two of you saw reason; I wasn’t looking forward to dragging your corpses into the Thames – especially yours, no offense.”

                Roadhog, who had pulled his mask up just above his mouth, was too busy shoveling little squares of the sweet cake into his maw to give a verbal answer, but he did give a thumbs up. Ana nodded.

                “And besides,” she continued, “all my basbousa would’ve gone to waste. Morrison doesn’t like it, and I’ve already eaten far too much for my own good.” She stood up and put the now-empty tray in a flight cabinet.

                “So would you ‘ave shot us if we just said no?”

                “I guess we’ll never know,” Ana sighed, and gave the two ex-bandits a glowing smile. Junkrat blanched.

                “I like her,” Roadhog said as he pulled his mask back down.

                “Everyone does. Now kick back, it’s still a half-hour to base.”

                Ana walked up the stairs to the cockpit where Morrison was buckled up in front of a massive wall of glowing orange buttons. The dropship could’ve flown back to Gibraltar on autopilot, but the old soldier liked the control that manual flight gave him, how the slightest change in the air currents kept his muscle memory sharp while his thoughts could wander. Ana could see the furrows in his brow, and she put her hand on his shoulder.

                “You think we can do better,” he said, less a question than a statement.

                “ _I_ think heroes are harder to find these days,” she answered anyway, “and those we _can_ find won’t always fit the same mold we came from.” She squeezed his shoulder and let go. “I think we should also try out that new air-freshening module that Winston added last week.”

                “We’re gonna be heroes, Roadie,” Junkrat whispered, oblivious to the faint smell of mint wafting into the dropship cabin. Roadhog had reclined his seat and put his hands behind his head, but the younger Junker could tell he wasn’t asleep yet. “Think of it! The fame! The glory! Everyone’s gonna want to be _us_ for a change – or be _with_ us, am I right, mate?” He nudged Roadhog from across the aisle. The titanic Junker grunted noncommittally. “Maybe they’ll build a statue in our honor! And then I can blow it up! _Ooh_ , maybe they can use really advanced tech so it can blow itself up and then put itself back together!”

                “We’ll see,” Roadhog finally conceded with a yawn, and closed his eyes.

                _Mako! Catch me, Mako!_

                He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling until the dropship begin its descent into the faint, pale morning sky above Watchpoint Gibraltar.


	2. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junkrat and Roadhog are great at first impressions! Twist: they are not. Zarya and Mei finally appear, and the Junker boys go to the doctor's, who is very curious as to why two dudes with a serious grudge against wearing both shirts and any significant body protection have been able to not only survive, but to be as successful as they are without, you know, dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). Make sure to check the bottom notes for a change in the first chapter.
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                Aleksandra Zaryanova let the steaming-hot water cascade through her short, pink hair, across her broad shoulders, and down her muscular body as she rested her forehead against the sleek, silver tiles of the shower wall. Two hours of heavy lifting, brutal cardio, and blasting industrial metal had done nothing to silence the ghosts in her head, the vertical red lights washing over her dreams that suffocated her with blood-soaked metal claws and bullet-casing teeth. The water streamed through her still-shaking hands, washing over lifting callouses and combat scars alike. Maybe she would take Dr. Ziegler up on her offer after all.

                A shadow drifted across the first tendrils of cold morning twilight that crept through the bathroom window; Aleksandra looked out and saw one of the dropships returning, its trajectory arcing slowly down to one of the landing pads outside. Three of the VTOLs had left the night before, carrying senior Overwatch personnel to potential recruits, but this was the first one to arrive back. The suite intercom buzzed, and the tall Russian squinted at the grille on the wall. Who else could be up this early?

                “Hello?” she asked, stepping out of the shower and pressing a button on the wall console. No longer detecting an occupant, the shower shut itself off.

                “早上好!” the perky, female voice on the other end called.

                “Доброе утро, Mei,” Aleksandra answered in her own native tongue as she reached for a towel. “You’re up earlier than usual.”

                “I know,” Mei said hesitantly. “Hey, one of the dropships is back! Let’s go see who’s on it!”

                “I’ll be out in a minute.”

                “Okay!”

                She finished toweling off before throwing on track pants and a grey long-sleeve compression, then walking barefoot to the suite door. It opened with a quiet hiss, revealing Mei-Ling Zhou, wrapped in blue pajamas and a padded, matching robe, sipping politely from a novelty-sized blue mug of black tea. Her drone, Snowball, floated just behind, and beeped in greeting.

                “Good morning!” Mei said, waving cheerfully before returning her hand to hold the oversized cup.

                “Good morning yourself,” Aleksandra replied. Mei seemed awake, but she was paler than usual, and her eyes were ringed by dark circles. “How many cups have you had?”

                “Four,” Mei answered, her eyes darting down to the tea and back up, “not counting this one.” She took another sip. “I, um, forgot to turn the thermostat back up before I went to bed and—”

                “How much sleep did you get?”

                “…Couple of hours.”

                “Mei, you need to talk to Dr. Ziegler,” Aleksandra chided, crossing her arms and hiding her own hands in her armpits.

                “I know.”

                 They stood in silence, Aleksandra looking at Mei and Mei looking at her black tea, sheepishly wiggling her plush pink slipper along a groove in the metal floor.

                “So, the dropship?” Aleksandra said after what felt like an hour of awkward stillness.

                “Right!” Mei perked up and started off down the hall to the barracks entrance. Aleksandra followed, leaving still-warm footprints on the metal that stayed for a moment, then disappeared. “Maybe it’s another scientist! That would be wonderful!”

                “Or a soldier; it would be nice to have someone with real combat experience for a change.”

                “Hey!” Mei exclaimed, feigning offense, “I hold my own! Icicles are a perfectly valid weapon.”

                “Only if you can hit your targets without having to stand right next to them.”

                “Hmph!” Mei adjusted her glasses haughtily, but broke into giggles a second later. “My aim _is_ pretty terrible.”

                “Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem,” Aleksandra said, a grin crossing her usually stoic features. Mei smacked Aleksandra’s arm, and their laughter filled the living quarters’ quiet halls. The conversation continued in a similar fashion until they reached the balcony overlooking the barracks common room: a large, open space with tables, chairs, a flat-screen television roughly the size of a van, and an imitation fireplace. The barracks entrance slid open, and all chatter between the Russian soldier and the Chinese climatologist promptly ceased.

                When Ana Amari and Jack Morrison stepped into the common room, two more figures (and the stench of gasoline) strode confidently in after them, lumbering and hobbling like a couple of ill-maintained machines. In front wobbled the smaller of the two: a grinning, hunched-over gremlin of a man with patchy, singed blond hair, orange eyes that darted about constantly, and a rudely pointy chin. A grenade belt was strapped over his chest, and the only scrap of actual clothing he wore was a pair of patchy, green pants. His right arm and leg were prosthetics that seemed to be made from car parts. Bionic limbs aside, he was built like a swimmer, but Mei was sure he hadn’t been anywhere in the vicinity of water in the last six months: he was coated, from head to toe, in a thick layer of grime and soot that seemed to constantly flake off of him in a small cloud. His cartoonishly-thick eyebrows rose as he spotted the two women on the balcony, and his prosthetic hand rattled as it waved enthusiastically. Mei returned the gesture, but much more meekly. Aleksandra didn’t respond at all; she was too busy staring at the second newcomer.

                 Lumbering behind his poorly-postured companion, the second Junker dwarfed Amari and towered over Morrison by more than a foot. The monstrous man’s gigantic, muscular frame and arms stood in direct contrast with his grossly obese belly, which sported a cartoonish tattoo of a flaming pig/engine cartoon with his bellybutton forming the crude nose. With blue camo overalls, makeshift body armor all over, and a license plate belt that read ‘ROADR8GE,’ he looked like a junkyard come to life. His stark white hair was pulled back into something halfway between a ponytail and a top-knot, and his face was obscured by a stitched-together gasmask vaguely shaped like the head of a pig. A rusted hook hung off of a chain rolled up on a belt-mounted spool on his left side, and in his right hand was a weapon that looked like the incredibly angry offspring of a shotgun and an industrial shredder.

                There was not a single thing about either of the men that Aleksandra did not immediately find repugnant, but before she could think of something snarky to say to Mei, a gigantic black blur swept by them.

                “Junkrat! Roadhog! It’s great to finally meet you!” Winston called as he hurdled the balcony and landed with a loud thump on the floor. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

                “Talking monkey,” Junkrat stammered out, his eyes threatening to bulge out of his skull. “It’s a talking monkey.”

                “Talking _gorilla_ ,” Winston clarified, adjusting his glasses with a smile as he approached them. “Same parvorder, though, so you were close.” Junkrat and Roadhog stared in stunned silence as the gorilla in a sleeveless, high-tech bodysuit casually padded over to them and held out his paw; after a moment of hesitation (more out of surprise than fear), Junkrat shook it, and a few moments later so did Roadhog. “Happy to have you with us.”

                “Happy to be here,” Junkrat said with a crooked, dumbfounded smile.

                “My name’s Winston, and I’m…well, I’m in charge here. Sorry we don’t have much of a welcome wagon for you at the moment,” he said, turning around and motioning for the two new recruits to follow. “Most of our operatives are out in the field right now…” He checked his watch. It was just a few minutes past six in the morning. “…or are still in bed.” Winston looked back and gave a sheepish shrug. “With a few exceptions,” he explained as he gestured towards Jack and Ana, “many of our current members aren’t from armed forces backgrounds, so mornings aren’t like what you’d find on an ordinary military base.”

                “Fine by me,” Junkrat yawned, stretching out and looking at one of the couches longingly as they passed.

                “I’m going up to Command to check in with the other two teams,” Ana said, and she turned toward the exit, though not before pointing a cautionary finger at the Junkers. “Be good, you two!”

                “Aye aye, ma’am!” Junkrat said, straightening slightly and giving what, to him, resembled a salute. “Sir? Ma’am-Sir? Miss? Missus? Missus-Ma’am-Sir?”

                Roadhog briefly entertained the idea of punching Junkrat through the ceiling, but settled for a wave.

                “Ah, here’s two of our best and brightest!” Winston boasted as they reached the stairway leading up to the living quarters. “Junkrat and Roadhog, meet Mei-Ling Zhou and Aleksandra Zaryanova; Mei-Ling is the world’s foremost climatologist (and pretty handy with an ice gun), and Aleksandra is the RDF’s Overwatch liaison – and probably the last person on the team you want to make angry. Besides me, anyway.”

                “Check the sheilas, mate,” Junkrat hissed out of the side of his mouth, nodding at the two women on the balcony. Roadhog, whose eyes were hidden behind blank lenses, was miles ahead of him.

                Mei-Ling was short and round, with a soft face, rosy cheeks, bright brown eyes framed by black-rimmed glasses, a button nose, and small, delicate lips. Her long brown hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and was held in place by an exquisite snowflake pin that Junkrat was relatively sure could be used as a shank. Her thick, fur-lined, blue velvet robe was covered in intricate, cloudlike patterns, and as she shifted from one pink-slippered foot to the other, the fabric hugged her hips closely enough to momentarily replace the eternally combusting train of thought running through Junkrat’s mind with visions of rusted harps and wild-eyed cherubs; beneath the thick layer of grime and soot caked over his skin, his face turned bright red.

                Aleksandra, in contrast, was tall and hard, and her muscular arms stretched the grey compression top to its limits as they folded across her ample chest: she was built like an Olympian, all functional strength and stout Russian genetics. Her eyes were deep, inescapable forest green, and they sat on high cheekbones flanking a sharp, upturned nose above a pursed, slightly-frowning mouth. Her jawline jutted heroically down into a strong, slightly dimpled chin. A shock of short, neon-pink hair (cropped close on the sides) sat atop her head, and a handsome scar jutted up from her right temple to her forehead. She was ice and fury, and her stare down at the two ex-bandits was as cold as a Siberian winter’s night.

                “You take the big one, I’ll take the one in the slippers,” Junkrat whispered, then waved at the two women again. “G’day, ladies!”

                “What do you think they’re whispering about us?” Mei murmured to Aleksandra, trying to keep her mouth still as she forced a smile.

                “Does it matter?” Aleksandra whispered back through gritted teeth as she nodded curtly in acknowledgement.

                Roadhog returned the gesture.

                _Mako, come inside! The hogs’ll keep until tomorrow, you conch!_

                “Mei, Zarya, these are our new demolitions specialists; Roadhog fought in the first Omnic Crisis, and Junkrat’s unparalleled in the field of explosives; particularly, uh, improvised ones!” Winston announced, practically beaming.

                “That’s right, ladies,” Junkrat crowed, putting his thumbs in his harness and straightening up slightly, “there’s nothin’ I can’t blow up!”

                “And here I thought we were trying to _save_ lives,” Mei muttered.

                “Uh, well, I can disarm’em, too,” Junkrat quickly added. “Wouldn’t be much of an ‘explosives expert’ if I couldn’t take’em apart, right?”

                “No, you would not,” Aleksandra replied, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop by ten degrees. “What about you, big man?”

                “Oi, ‘Hog here? He does plenty! Hey Roadie, I’m dry; why don’t you get me that big blue mug?”

                A silver bolt shot out from Roadhog’s left hand, passed Junkrat’s head by mere inches, hooked around the large cup of tea in Mei’s hands, and yanked it back into the towering ex-bandit’s waiting paw all in the span of a second. Mei squealed in delayed surprise, and even Aleksandra did a double-take.

                “ _That’s_ what I do,” Roadhog said, raising the cup easily with one hand (pinkie extended, of course) as he flourished the rusted chain-hook in the other.

                “Ripper, right?”

                The common area was uncomfortably quiet. Winston shot a worried glance towards Jack as Junkrat turned back to Roadhog.

                “That usually gets a bigger reaction; did we foul somethin’ up?” he asked under his breath.

                “We’ve only done it twice, and the last guy we did it for we killed, so.”

                “Right. We’ll practice later,” Junkrat said, then carefully took the surprisingly heavy mug out of his partner’s hands, and scampered up the stairs. As he climbed, he caught a whiff of the steaming liquid, and his eyes brightened. “Is that tea? I love tea! I always drink—”

                “Give me back my cup,” Mei asked coldly, her face scrunching up as the inescapable stench of petrol, gunpowder, and sweat assailed her senses.

                “It’s perfectly fine,” Junkrat insisted, visibly taken aback. He turned the cup around to demonstrate his point. “No scratches, no cracks, no nothin’!”

                Mei’s stare narrowed, partly to get a better look at the mug, and partly to get a better look at the gangly Junker. He could’ve been 18 or 45; the numberless layers of sand and grit and grease that covered his face made his actual age impossible to guess, although between those expressive eyes and nervous smile, there might’ve once been something approaching attractive underneath all that—wait, was he blushing?

                “Give. Me. Back. My. Cup.”

                After a moment’s hesitation, Junkrat gingerly placed the large mug in Mei’s outstretched hands and jumped back, arms raised defensively.

                “Just a trick, mate, that’s all. Little parlor trick, y’know, that’s it. Just showin’ off, just a bit of fun. I mean, I’m sure you can do some fun stuff with your, um, what was it, ice gun, right? Your ice gun?”

                “Yes, I can,” Mei said, taking a sip of her black tea without breaking eye contact. “I can shoot icicles through mean peoples’ faces.”

                Junkrat swallowed hard and almost fell over himself as he scampered back down the stairs.

                “Well, that was exciting!” Winston exclaimed, overzealously clapping his paws together, “Junkrat! Roadhog! Why don’t I take you on a tour of our facilities? Did you know we have an Olympic-sized swimming pool?”

                “Yeah, So—er, Morrison said something about that,” Junkrat said as he took one last furtive glance at the balcony. Now they were _both_ glaring.

                “Great! I told him to. Anyway, let’s head out! We can start at the infirmary and get you two all set up with Dr. Ziegler,” the scientist gorilla said, turning towards the door. “Roadhog?”

                _Dull emeralds shining out from underneath dust, glinting reflections of fire in the distance._

                Roadhog was still as a statue, head craned up at the second-floor landing, his throwing arm loose but his hand gripping the hook with white knuckles. Aleksandra stared back down at him, fists clenched tight, jaw set. Junkrat thought he heard a low growl emanating from Roadhog’s gasmask.

                _Mako, c’mon!_

                “Roadie, c’mon,” Junkrat said, and he gave the hook’s chain a yank. Roadhog whirled to face him, and it took him a few seconds to relax. “Grand tour? Swimming pool? Let’s go.”

                Roadhog grunted, hooked the chain around his belt, and followed silently. He didn’t look back. Aleksandra, on the other hand, didn’t take her eyes off of him until the barracks entrance quietly closed, her balled fists relaxing as the doors shut.

                Morrison stalked up the stairway to the landing.

                “Thanks for the warm welcome,” he grumbled, “maybe I’ll have you greet _all_ of our new recruits from now on.”

                “Maybe you shouldn’t recruit disgusting garbage-men with giant metal hooks,” Mei said as she glared at her mug and tried to scrub Junkrat’s filthy black fingerprints off with her thumbs. “Or at least hose them off before we meet them.”

                “First the Omnic, and now we recruit killers and madmen? What follows, we start hiring Talon contractors?” Morrison shot Aleksandra a look that would’ve rusted solid steel, but she was undeterred. “I have seen these men on the news, Commander. They care about nothing. Men like them almost destroyed my country after the Omnic Crisis, and if you think I will just stand by and—”

                “Frankly, _soldier_ ,” the Strike Commander interrupted, “I don’t care what you think. Winston believes that given the right resources and the right direction, they could be capable of a lot more than just massive property damage and stuffed animal theft, and I agree with him.”

                “I agree with you both,” Aleksandra said, bitterness rising in her voice, “and this is what worries me.” She turned on her heel and stomped back down the hall, her bare feet falling heavily on the metal. Mei shuffled along behind her, cursing under her breath in Mandarin as she angrily rubbed the mug with her sleeve.

+++

                “I never been in a doc’s office as flash as this,” Junkrat said, peering about the base infirmary with wide eyes. It was one part medical facility, one part storage facility, all bathed in blinding, surgical light: among the stretchers hovering at waist level, cabinets stocked with antibiotics, disinfectants, and bandages, and wall-mounted body scanners, there were cardboard boxes and shipping containers, mostly still unpacked. It was a mess, but a high-tech mess.

                “You’ve never been in a doctor’s office, ever,” Roadhog added.

                “Well, there was that one time.”

                “Riding through a doctor’s office in a sidecar doesn’t count.”

                “Heh. Guess not, then.”

                Dr. Angela Ziegler let out a snort in spite of herself; when she’d first lifted a lock of platinum blonde hair from her eyes and seen the two Junkers wandering in behind Winston, leaving dirty footprints across the pristine white tile floor and smelling (and looking) like a garage on fire, the last thing she’d expected was a comedy routine, but the banter between the two had been nonstop.

                “If you’ll step into these body scanners, gentlemen, we can proceed,” she said, gesturing to the ringed, open columns along the room’s left wall. “This will only take a moment.”

                “Oooh, fancy! What do these do?” Junkrat asked as he hobbled inside the closest one.

                “Full-body biometric scanners. They’ll let me perform a complete checkup on the both of you, as well as scan you into our systems for training programs and mission monitoring, with a single button-press.”

                “No tongue depressors, huh?” Roadhog asked as he sidled into the one next to Junkrat.

                “You won’t even have to say ‘aah,’” Angela replied with a warm smile.

                “What if we want to?” Junkrat joked.

                “Then don’t,” Roadhog growled, although there was no menace behind it.

                With a barely-suppressed chuckle, Angela turned her attention to the translucent blue datapad in her hands, and Junkrat leaned over to his titanic fellow Junker.

                “It’s working! She’s laughing!” he whispered. “ _Told_ you we had to turn on the charm!”

                “What charm?” Roadhog muttered back, and Junkrat thought he heard the faintest trace of a smile in the reply.

                Junkrat and Roadhog had spent enough time working with larger crews back in Australia to know that if you could only have one person on your side, it had to be the medic, so when they both laid eyes on Dr. Ziegler – haphazard ponytail, sky-blue eyes, simple white lab coat draped over a dark crimson sweater, and brown hiking boots still caked in dust from half a world away – they knew it couldn’t be The Barracks Common Room 2: Chain-hook Boogaloo. The two bandits had employed the back-and-forth routine before, but always as a distraction until one of them started shooting, so it was nice (though Roadhog wouldn’t have admitted it) to ‘perform’ it with the actual aim of getting someone to laugh.

                The datapad gave an angry beep, and Angela looked up.

                “Mister…Junkrat, would you mind standing up straight for me?”

                Junkrat shot a nervous glance over to Roadhog.

                “Uh, sure, just give me a tick,” he said, scratching a patch of hair. After taking a deep breath, he practically threw himself straight up, his hunched form escalating to over six and a half feet tall. His yellow-orange eyes bulged, his muscles visibly strained, and beads of sweat formed along his brow.

                “I could have you lie down if that would be easier—” the doctor began.

                “Nope. Not easier. Just hurry,” Junkrat choked through clenched teeth.

                “Scanning now,” she announced as she pressed a button on the datapad. “You may feel a slight tingling sensation.”

                A million unseen, electric eyes scanned the two Junkers, and it reminded Roadhog of a light water spray minus the wetness of the water, and the uncanny feeling made goosebumps rise on his thick, pockmarked skin. Junkrat, on the other hand, was in too much pain to notice, and his eyes began to roll back in his head. After a few more seconds, the datapad let out another beep, much less angry than the first.

                “Done!” Angela said, but Junkrat didn’t move.

                “S-stuck…can’t…” he coughed as a stream of saliva leaked from the side of his mouth. Roadhog swiftly brought a massive hand down on the smaller Junker’s back, and Junkrat collapsed like a spring, first back down to his usual stature, then onto his knees on the floor, gasping for air. Angela practically flew to his side, checking his vitals. “All things bein’ equal,” he croaked, “I think I’d like to just turn me bloody head and cough next time.”

                “I’m sorry you had to endure that,” she apologized, “have you always had trouble standing up straight?”

                “Pretty much,” Roadhog answered.

                “I can lean back, and I can stick me legs out straight, I just, heh, I just can’t do’em at the same time,” Junkrat lamented, rubbing his lower back. Roadhog stretched out a massive hand and easily lifted his smaller companion back to his feet.

                “I can take a look at your back if you’d like,” Dr. Ziegler offered as she hurriedly retrieved her datapad and began sorting through Junkrat’s scan. “You’d be surprised what modern medicine is capable of; I’ve seen men who couldn’t even walk—”

                “Maybe a bit later, doc,” he said, wiping his forehead, “anyway, what’s the scan say? We missin’ any of our bits?”

                “Besides the obvious,” Roadhog added, lifting up Junkrat’s prosthetic arm by the wrist and giving it a little wave. The younger Junker chuckled, although Angela wasn’t quite sure how to react. Instead, she turned her attention back to the readouts on the datapad.

                “Well, if we start on the skeletal level, it looks like…actually, you _both_ are—wait, that can’t be right,” she began, her face changing from confusion to surprise to shock. She squinted at the pad and held it close to her eyes, but what she saw was unmistakable. She pressed a few buttons and the two ex-bandits’ readouts were projected into the air in brilliant, holographic blue as the room’s lights dimmed in response. As Junkrat and Roadhog stared at their own skeletons, silhouetted by transparent body mass, Angela magnified the bones further. “Have any of you ever broken any bones?” she asked, not quite believing what she was seeing.

                “Honestly,” Junkrat began, “if at least a couple of blokes don’t need an ambo once we’re done, feels like we’re doin’ somethin’ wrong, y’know? Uh, not that we’re strictly in the business of hurtin’ people or anything.”

                Roadhog slapped his hand over his forehead.

                “I meant have you ever had any of _your_ bones broken,” Dr. Ziegler clarified, trying to mask her alarm. Where did Jack and Ana dig these two up?

                “Oh, uh…I dunno, doc.” Junkrat looked up at Roadhog. “Have we?”

                “Can’t remember,” Roadhog said as he shrugged. “Maybe, but it always heals up pretty fast.”

                “Well, no offense, but either the two of you are _much_ more careful than you appear,” Angela said as she looked over the skeletal holograms, “or there’s something very unusual going on here.” With a turn of her hand, the silhouettes faded, leaving nothing but clean, utterly pristine bone. “No signs of any past breakage whatsoever, not even a single stress fracture.” She thumbed through another tab, and the skeletal images were replaced by muscular diagrams. The doctor shook her head in disbelief, a dumbfounded, lopsided smile crossing her face. “Zero signs of any past tissue damage…Unglaublich.”

                “Wouldn’t say zero, exactly,” Junkrat said, wiggling his peg leg.

                Angela swept past him and held up her datapad to one of the many dark marks across Roadhog’s skin; the advanced technology scanned the mole in barely a second, and the Swiss doctor’s eyes lit up with more than just the blue glow of the holograms.

                “Look here!” she said, pulling Junkrat over by the shoulder. The complex user interface didn’t make much sense to him, but he recognized the glint in the doctor’s eye. “These moles! This is melanoma, but the markings are just epidermal discoloration! The cancer itself has been completely neutralized! This is…this is…this is something I’ll have to examine further.”

                Doctor Ziegler quickly minimized the holograms, and the lights in the facility returned to normal, causing Junkrat to squint and cover his eyes.

                “The bottom line is the two of you are as physically fit for duty as anyone else on the team,” she explained as she slid the datapad into a docking port on her desk. “I’m uploading the scans to Athena now, so she should have simulation parameters calculated by the time you swing by the training center. I’d like to have both of you undergo psychiatric evaluation as well –

                You’re mad, man! Barking mad!

                – just standard operating procedure for all of our agents, you understand – but I’m sure you’re eager to see the rest of the compound. Just come by later today or tomorrow.” She gestured to the numerous shipping containers with a self-deprecating smile. “I’ll be here.”

                She led them out into the infirmary lobby, where Winston was still tinkering with an armless training bot hovering behind the front desk, fitting his gigantic paws as best he could into the machine’s rear port. Its monocular head turned and cheerfully addressed them.

                “Welcome to Dr. Ziegler’s clinic…Dr. Ziegler! Welcome to Dr. Ziegler’s clinic…unidentified guest! Welcome to Dr. Ziegler’s clinic…unidentified guest!”

                Winston pulled his hands out of the robot’s back and scowled at the circuits within.

                “Still can’t get the identification parameters right. I might have to start over from scratch,’ he explained, giving the floating robot a light tap on the head with his screwdriver.

                “Dr. Ziegler is currently…standing five feet away. Unable to discern if appointment in progress.”

                “At least you got the speech module working again,” Angela sympathized. Winston shrugged.

                “That an Omnic?” Roadhog asked, retrieving his hook and scrap gun from the holding cabinet next to the front desk before handing the jury-rigged grenade launcher to Junkrat, who quietly thumbed the safety off.

                “Russell? Oh no, he’s just a training bot I reprogrammed. Medical emergencies usually happen off-site, but if a flu ever starts going around, it’ll be useful to have someone at the door.”

                “Sir, madam, or otherwise, please state the nature of your medical emergency.”

                “Well, useful if I ever get him working properly. Anyway, how’re our new recruits?”

                “Ace, mate!” Junkrat crowed, disguising the sound of his thumb flicking the safety back on.

                “More or less,” Angela agreed, before shifting into her best doctor voice. “You two will be back soon, correct?”

                “Yes, ma’am!” Junkrat gave a wobbly salute. Roadhog just nodded.

                “Excellent!” Winston exclaimed as relief crossed his simian features. “The dining hall’s just around the corner, and I’m sure the two of you haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”

                “I did eat a few cake things on the way over; how many’d you eat, Roadie?”

                “The rest.”

                “Winston,” Angela called as she turned back towards her office, “I’ll catch up with you later.” She waved until the infirmary’s doors closed behind them, then returned to her desk, pulling up the scans again.

                “Dr. Ziegler,” Athena’s smooth voice chimed over the intercom, “I’ve successfully rendered Junkrat and Roadhog’s bioforms, but I’m unsure how you would prefer me to translate their physiological anomalies into the simulation.”

                “Do whatever you think is best,” the doctor muttered, barely listening to the AI’s request. Junkrat’s combined skeletal-muscular readout floated before her, and she magnified the stub of his right arm. The muscle and bone had not only fully healed from whatever injury or amputation he had undergone, it appeared as if they had somehow regenerated slightly, repairing nerve endings and completely erasing scar tissue in a manner no technology she had yet encountered could accomplish. She quickly checked his genetic readouts to see if the missing limbs were a birth defect instead, but the markers were all there in their proper place – except they weren’t, they weren’t in their proper place at all. The individual parts were all accounted for, but they were constructed in such a different way that it was like looking at a finished puzzle with every piece put together wrong. “Mein Gott,” she mumbled, and the wheels in her head began to turn.

+++

                “Roadhog, I think you might give me a run for most food eaten in a single sitting,” Winston laughed as they walked into the training center.

                “I was hungry,” Roadhog stated matter-of-factly.

                “Never eaten synthesized food before, but that stuff wasn’t half bad! Still can’t believe it wasn’t actually chips,” Junkrat added, still licking his fingers.

                The entrance closed behind them, cutting off the noonday sun and cool sea breeze with a metallic hiss, and they walked up a flight of stairs to a large, circular room with twelve sleek, reclining chairs set out surrounding a central console. There were observation windows high around the room’s walls, and the floor was dotted by small safety lights.

                “What’s this?” Roadhog asked.

                “This,” Jack Morrison answered as he strode around from the far side of the console, “is where you’re going to be spending most of your off-time.”

                “Does he always make entrances like that?” Junkrat asked under his breath.

                “Yes.”

                “There’s a reason Overwatch agents are so revered,” the Strike Commander began, “and you’re looking at it. Training drills can only take you so far; mission experience is what molds soldiers into heroes, but with the kind of missions we’ll be running, we need you at peak performance _before_ we hit the battlefield – and we need to keep you that way once you’re off it. Virtual reality simulations let us run live-fire exercises to sharpen our combat and team skills to a razor point at any time, day or night, without the risk of injury. It also enables us to test ourselves against one another: knowing your weaknesses is just as important as knowing your strengths, if not more so.”

                A door on the far end of the training room slid open, and Mei and Aleksandra stepped through in full combat gear; Mei in her bulletproof parka, Snowball floating just behind her, and Aleksandra in a sleeveless, blue-and-silver barrier suit. The armor was hardly necessary for VR training, but they wanted to make a statement.

                “Nice timing,” Morrison said over his shoulder before turning back to the two Junkers. “Gentlemen, meet your first opponents.”

                Junkrat blanched.

                Roadhog cracked his neck.

                “You take the big one, I’ll take the one with the peg leg,” Mei whispered, and she gave a cheerful wave. "Hello, boys!"

                Aleksandra just smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry this chapter took so long; originally it was going to be twice as long, but I decided to cut the second half out and expand it for next time rather than sit on this any longer. With that being said, expect the follow-up to be in sometime at the end of next week.
> 
> There's been a change in the first chapter; I was going back and doin' my research and I realized that the Second Omnic Crisis actually already started before Winston initiated the recall, so - since I'm trying to line this up with official canon as I can - I slightly altered Soldier 76's dialogue in one spot so he expounds on the Crisis spreading to the rest of the world instead of just being concentrated in Russia.


	3. Target Range

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei vs. Junkrat! Two Overwatch agents enter! Two Overwatch agents leave! Because it's a simulation!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). This chapter was a lot of fun because I think Mei and Junkrat have a really interesting in-game dynamic where, depending on circumstance and player skill, they can actually be counters for each other. With that being said, I've got an important questions for my readers in the end notes, so make sure to check those once you're done!
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                When Junkrat opened his eyes, he was standing in a disused industrial loading bay, surrounded by cardboard boxes, blue tool shelves, and offline consoles. A frigid breeze blew through the main entrance and whistled up the stairs to his left before leaving by a smaller doorway, and he rubbed his arms in spite of himself. Junkrat hobbled out of the loading bay and into the practice range, a multi-tiered collection of landings, orange-and-white hallways, and empty buildings, all populated by wandering training bots and hanging targets. Beyond the waist-high railings stretched cracked ice floes, towering glaciers, and dark blue water as far as the eye could see. The rising sun shone down through a cloudless blue sky, and Junkrat shielded his eyes from the almost blinding-white snow.

                “Holy dooley, this ain’t real?”

                “Technically it is,” came the reply, Jack Morrison’s voice descending from the simulated heavens. “This is a digital recreation of one of our old training ranges; Gibraltar’s facilities are advanced in scope but limited in size, so having a virtual, multi-tiered target range on our internal server is pretty handy.”

                Junkrat nodded wordlessly, and squinted at the floor, searching for any indication of its digital nature; there were none. He’d seen some advanced VR in his days – especially in that Japanese arcade he and Roadhog robbed a few months back – but this was on a completely new level. An icicle flew inches past his face, and he jumped back with a shriek. On top of a nearby building, Mei waved.

                “Hi!”

                “Eh, g’day,” Junkrat said, taking a cautious step backward.

                Mei casually walked off the building and landed on the walkway below, the kinetic compensators in her bulky snow-boots softening the drop to almost nothing. Junkrat noticed a few more combat-essential additions to her person: a leather utility belt, a coolant-tank mounted on her back, and in her a right hand a large, high-tech firearm with a ring of frost around its barrel. His eyes were drawn to it, and Mei held it up as she approached.

                “That the ice gun?” he asked.

                “Endothermic blaster, but yeah.” She twisted a knob on the side and a spherical chamber on the back filled up with glowing blue coolant. Junkrat’s eyes widened, but as he looked closer at it, she couldn’t tell if he was scared or intrigued or both.

                “How’s it work?” he asked.

                Both, it seemed. Not the question she was expecting.

                “Oh! Well, it—”

                “You can save the lecture for later, Dr. Zhou,” Morrison commented, and suddenly Junkrat found himself standing at the opposite end of the range from Mei, his grenade launcher in his hand, a detonation charge at his side. He held it up to his eyes, tested its weight, knocked on parts of it he knew weren’t in the best of shape, but if this was all a simulation, he still couldn’t tell the difference.

                “We scanned your weaponry in while you were getting adjusted to the range,” Winston explained, seeing Junkrat’s inspection. “Athena also has some questions about your armament choice, but we can go over those later,” he hesitantly added.

                Mei appeared across from him, quickly digitizing into existence through hexagonal layers of pixels. A glowing blue barrier popped up between them, spanning the entire range as only a virtual construct could.

                “This’ll be a best two out of three match; neither of you know anything about the other, so I want you to come out with everything you’ve got,” Morrison announced.

                “What do we get if we win?” Junkrat asked, looking up at the sky as if addressing an invisible, heavenly Strike Commander.

                “Bragging rights,” Morrison replied after a moment. “Now get to it!”

                The blue barrier vanished.

                “Are you sure this is a good idea, Jack?” Winston whispered as quietly as he could, keeping his finger on the microphone’s mute button.

                “Sure,” he replied confidently, “we used to use the target range to settle grudges all the time back in the old days. It always worked out.” Winston couldn’t help but raise a quizzical eyebrow. “Almost always,” the old soldier added.

                “Wait, are we supposed to scrap? Like…try to kill each other?”

                An icicle whistled past the confused Junker, off-target by feet, but close enough to serve as an answer.

                Like he did in most situations, Junkrat charged forward wildly, firing grenades and grinning like a maniac. Seeing the volley of smoking projectiles flying her way, Mei flicked a switch on her endothermic blaster and erected a wall of ice between her and the grenades, which exploded harmlessly against the thick barrier.

                “Hey, that ain’t fair!” Junkrat complained as he slapped another basket of bombs into his grenade launcher and let them loose. A portion of the ice wall crumbled to shattered chunks under the assault, and the rest quickly followed. Mei, however, was nowhere to be seen. An icicle shrieked out of a nearby doorway and stabbed Junkrat in the left shoulder, immediately draining all feeling from his arm. He whirled around and fired one-handed, emptying the grenade launcher into the small building and shaking his left arm to regain feeling, but the explosives only sent abandoned consoles and empty shelves flying. _Wish Roadhog was here_ , he thought, _big guy always knows what to do_. Wanting to limit the number of angles of attack, Junkrat began retreating away from the tall buildings and onto what might’ve once been a landing pad.

                “Uh, listen, Mei, I—”

                “That’s _Doctor_ Zhou to you!” Her voice echoed through the orange-and-white walls, and Junkrat couldn’t pinpoint its origin. The ground beneath him suddenly erupted in ice as a rising barrier threw him onto his back. He quickly scrambled to his feet and took cover behind the frigid wall, poking one eye around the corner. _Hogan’s bones, is everybody in Overwatch a doctor?_

                “ _Doctor_ Zhou, I think we, uh, I think we started off on the wrong foot back in the lobby, y’see,” he began, but a freezing blast down his back ended his sentence in a surprised scream. He looked up and saw Mei atop the frozen wall, a stream of aerosolized coolant howling from her endothermic blaster. Hobbling as fast as he could, Junkrat managed to wobble out of her short range, but his joints and muscles were slowed by the blast, and every step was a struggle as he mumbled curses through chattering teeth.

                Junkrat dove into one of the buildings, but no sooner had he stood up then he realized there was only one way in and out. He turned and fired haphazardly through the doorway, but Mei, encumbered by thick thermal gear and heavy equipment as she was, deftly avoided each one, hopping over and around them with a mischievous smile. Junkrat was so distracted by her anti-ballistic bouncing that he forgot to reload, and when her endothermic blaster opened up again, he was caught completely defenseless, watching in a mixture of fascination and horror as a thick layer of ice closed around his body.

                “B-back on the s-s-stairs, I w-was g-g-gonna say—” Junkrat’s sentence was cut off as the ice closed around his head, leaving him a translucent blue statue in a semi-permanent cower.

                “Do you always talk this much when you’re in a fight?” Mei asked, adjusting her glasses as she admired her handiwork.

                “Yes.” Roadhog’s voice boomed out of the sky like distant thunder.

                “Yeph,” Junkrat weakly confirmed from within the ice, and it cracked slightly as he tried to nod his head.

                “Well, you shouldn’t,” she chided, waggling a finger in his frozen face, “you could get distracted, and out in the field that could get you killed.” Junkrat thought about mentioning how she’d been distracting enough without the conversation, but he saw her point to his good leg and giggle. “I guess your only foot _is_ your wrong foot.”

                _Heh, wrong foot,_ he thought, _that’s pretty fu—_

                Junkrat watched with half-dazed surprise as his body fell to the ground, an icicle driven straight through his temple, and Mei blew the frost from the barrel of her blaster. Suddenly, Junkrat’s prosthetic arm flipped open, releasing half a dozen bombs onto the floor, heralded by a small internal speaker playing an unhinged, high-pitched laugh. Mei encased herself in ice just as the explosives detonated, and when she burst out of the block a few seconds later, her eyes were still wide with surprise.

                “What…what was that?!”

                “Oh, that? Dead man’s switch! Set it up to the readings in me prosthetics; no more heartbeat, it’s boom time! I call it…’TOTAL MAYHEM!’” Junkrat, temporarily deprived of an avatar, enjoyed the sound of his own voice echoing through the target range, and cackled loudly to enhance the effect.

                “That’s crazy,” Mei remarked, brushing a few ice crystals off her shoulder.

                “That’s clever,” Aleksandra said as she watched the feed of the match projected into a floating hologram in the middle of the room, her arms still crossed. “IED set to his own vitals; your comrade is not as stupid as he appears.” Her eyes drifted down from the glowing simulation to Roadhog’s towering figure; if he’d heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it. “I will reserve my estimation of you until after I am victorious,” she added.

                Roadhog chuckled, and the sound reminded Aleksandra of a faulty industrial engine.

                “Eyes on the match, soldiers,” Jack interjected with more than a little annoyance. “You’ll get your chance soon enough."

                Junkrat was on the move almost before he finished rematerializing, hobbling towards Mei with a grin that favored determination over madness; he fired a single grenade and the ice wall went up before it had closed half the distance. Swinging his launcher to the left, he let two more bombs fly through the same door the icicle had flown out of the first round, and a series of detonations followed by a muffled ‘Ooof!’ told him he’d guessed right. Rather than move in the for the kill, Junkrat tossed a concussion pack at his feet, flicked the detonator switch, and used the blast wave to launch himself to the top of the target range’s central tower, where he quickly hunkered down, out of sight.

                Soon enough, Mei cautiously limped around the corner, her boots and the front of her heavy white parka blackened by grenade blasts. Her nose was red, and she wiped it on a torn sleeve. Junkrat felt a pang of regret seeing her in pain, but didn’t feel quite bad enough to pop his head up above the building’s lip just yet. As quietly as he could, he slid a full box of grenades into his launcher, then sprung to his feet and opened fire. Mei ducked and the bombs flew clear over her head, exploding against the safety railings overlooking the long plunge into the frigid – but simulated – sea below.

                “Looks like I’m not the only who needs to work on their aim,” Mei said, lining up an icicle shot.

                “What makes you think I was aimin’ for you, huh?” Junkrat crowed. Mei’s eyes widened and she turned around to see…nothing. “Ha ha, made you look!” Mei whirled back with a withering glower and took a step forward – squarely into the metal bear-trap the Junker had tossed down when her back was turned. The ice wall shot up preemptively, but no grenades impacted against it; instead, a concussion charge flipped lazily over the top and landed right at Mei’s feet.

                “他媽的!”

                Tossed by the blast, she disappeared – trap and all – over the now-rail-less ledge with a panicked wail, and the icy splash that followed was music to Junkrat’s ears.

                “ _Now_ who’s distracted, eh Snowball?”

                “Snowball is the name of my drone!” Mei’s disembodied voice groaned. “Ooooh, I’m going to get you next round!”

                “Ooooh, I’m gonna getcha next round!” Junkrat parroted back, manipulating his steel trap like a sock puppet.

                “He learns fast,” Jack remarked, and Winston nodded in agreement.

                “So does she,” Aleksandra spat, her voice icy with contempt. Roadhog’s eyes, hidden behind opaque lenses, traced the slope of her clenched jaw, the shadow of her neck in the training room’s low light. He heard the loud clink of beer bottles and the lazy whirr of an ill-maintained ceiling fan and—

                _What’re you lookin’ at, dero?_

                Aleksandra watched Roadhog slap himself in the head, twice and hard, although Jack and Winston seemed not to notice. She opened her mouth to say something, but the Junker’s masked face snapped up in her direction.

                “What’re _you_ lookin’ at?” he growled, his breath sounding oddly labored.

                “A dead man – in a few minutes,” she shot back without missing a beat.

                After Mei respawned, there was a moment of calm between her and Junkrat as they sized each other up from across the practice range. Neither had taken the other seriously at the beginning, but they had both seen what the other could do in the last two rounds; the element of the unknown was gone, now it was just going to come down to whoever made the first mistake. They both smiled, sure it was going to be the other one who slipped up.

                Junkrat’s uncharacteristically subdued expression broke into a wide grin, and he winked.

                Mei scowled over slightly pink cheeks, and she fired an icicle.

                As quick as the first two rounds had been, the third was a protracted slugfest, with wintery blasts and homemade grenades filling the air between the two combatants. Every full volley was met by a rising wall of ice, and just as Junkrat had lured her close to another deadly edge, she encased herself in  a frozen shell, the concussion detonation barely cracking the surface. Even his traps met their match: extended exposure to her endothermic blasts caused the springs to freeze, then shatter completely, rendering the whole thing useless.

                Still, she wasn’t able to gain any lasting advantage. Junkrat had learned after being frozen solid the first time around to stay far out of range of that lethal coolant stream, so he kept to the rooftops and stayed in the air as much as possible, abandoning every vantage point as soon as the surface turned icy. He angled grenades over and around her ice walls, constantly forcing her to reposition, and harassed her with bombs when she stopped to disable his traps. He also took note of where she headed when she took a few too many explosions, and utilized the health kits scattered around the range to keep up with her cryo-regeneration, neither of them ever dipping too low.

                They didn’t just trade blows, however.

                “Missed again? Maybe you need to get those specs cleaned, ‘ _Doctor_ Zhou!’”

                “The only thing that needs cleaning around here is _you_!”

                As the fight dragged on, however, they both became frustrated with the other’s stubborn refusal to die, and mistakes began happening. Mei, trying to fire off as many icicles as she could, wasn’t as fast on her ice wall as she should’ve been, and Junkrat’s concentration started fraying, and with it his already tenuous sense of self-preservation. Fed up with Mei’s perpetual sieging, Junkrat hopped down to her level, yanked the massive, spike-and-chain-covered tire off of his back, and yanked the cord on its armored inner casing with a mad cackle. The wheel revved in place for only a moment, belching puffs of black smoke, then it took off straight for the climatologist, whose last wall had just broken. However, instead of exploding right in front of her, the tire took a sharp left and vanished into one of the buildings with a defiant buzz, its primitive targeting systems seemingly gone completely haywire.

                Junkrat, for one of the few times in his life, was utterly speechless, and stared in dumb shock as the black trail of smoke dissipated into the air. Uninterested in waiting for him to recover, Mei unleashed her own secret weapon: she grabbed her drone out of its housing on the end of the coolant tank and tossed him towards the dumbfounded Junker, who only just began to register what was happening as Snowball ejected a massive amount of coolant into the air, creating a localized, artificial blizzard. In barely three seconds, Junkrat was frozen solid – again – and Mei calmly sauntered up to him, and took aim with her endothermic blaster. Wanting to savor the victory a little longer, she reloaded the ice gun with a dramatic knob-turn and the sweetest smile that Junkrat had ever seen. Just as the weapon’s ammunition tank had finished filling, the Junker’s errant RIP-Tire flew out of a nearby window and dove straight for Mei; now it was her turn to be dumbfounded, and even though she raised her blaster, her trigger finger hesitated as the RIP-Tire fell closer and closer, close enough for her to read the rusty ‘Moto’ logo on the side. Her finger began to squeeze just as the RIP-Tire’s spikes closed to within an inch of her glasses, and she thought she heard Junkrat's muffled laughter through the ice.

                She closed her eyes tight and fired.

                When she opened them, she saw the RIP-Tire suspended in the air right in front of her face, one of the metal spikes embedded in its rim gently pushing her glasses slightly down her button nose. Junkrat, still frozen, stared in confusion at the icicle half-embedded in his icy prison, barely a centimeter from his neck. The simulation was paused.

                “Alert! Talon agents have been spotted in Houston, Texas. All Overwatch operatives mobilize immediately!” Athena’s voice boomed over the Watchpoint’s intercom.

                Junkrat blinked and when he opened his eyes again, he was back in the training room, the VR chair smoothly returning him to an upright position. Mei was already out of her chair and halfway out the door behind Aleksandra and Morrison, while Winston was still shutting the simulation down. Roadhog’s massive hand pulled Junkrat off the sleek cushions, then caught him as he stumbled forward, all physical coordination seemingly gone.

                “Take your time,” Winston cautioned as he closed a final menu, “coming back to the ‘real world’ after a VR session can be pretty disconcerting the first few times. The disorientation should pass in a few minutes.”

                “I should bloody well hope so,” Junkrat replied as he rubbed his eyes, trying to get them to focus. He looked up and saw there were now five Winstons instead of just one. “Holy dooley.”

                Roadhog casually tucked the smaller Junker under his arm and followed the simian scientist out of the training complex.

                Outside, Aleskandra and Mei jogged across the campus side by side; Morrison, spry old man he was, had broken into a sprint as soon as he was out the door, but the climatologist and the soldier were in no hurry – they couldn’t _all_ be genetically-modified super soldiers, after all.

                “I had him,” Mei insisted, “I _had_ him!”

                “I know you did,” Aleksandra agreed. “I’m sure you can take it up with Talon.”

                “Stupid bombs and his stupid traps and his stupid grin and his stupid little wink and—”

                “Mornin’, girls!”

                In a blue flash, Lena Oxton was beside them, jaunting easily along as if she hadn’t just traversed the entire base in a matter of seconds.

                “Lena.” Aleksandra nodded with a smile.

                “Tracer!” Mei’s mood brightened instantly.

                “Thought you two would be excited about finally seeing some field work!” Lena remarked.

                “Oh, we are. It’s just…”

                “New recruits,” Aleksandra finished, motioning over her shoulder. Lena looked back, looked at the two Junkers following Winston, and had to lift up her orange flight goggles just to make sure she saw the odd pair correctly.

                “Hey, aren’t those the two fellas who stole the Crown Jewels?”

                “Yes.”

                Lena put her goggles back on, but they did nothing to hide her concerned expression.

                “I’m sure Winston had his reasons,” she said at last.

                “Let’s hope they are good ones,” Aleksandra muttered.

                Junkrat, whose vision had cleared enough by then to admire the view ahead, whistled under his breath.

                “Hate to see’em leave, but love to see’em g-UGH!”

                Roadhog gave Junkrat enough of a squeeze to cut off the end of the sentence in an ugly choke.

                “Could you _try_ to keep out of trouble for once?” he growled.

                “Fine, fine,” Junkrat replied, tossing his still wobbly arms up in mock exasperation. “I reckon _you’re_ completely immune to such ‘feminine wiles,’ hm?”

                Roadhog grunted, but Junkrat knew him well enough to interpret the answer, so he went back to ogling in silence. Lena barely cracked 5’4”, all legs and leather jacket and a 5,000,000-watt smile in a skin-tight yellow flight suit that hugged every curve like she was poured into it, and her hips moved with every step in just the most delightful—

                “Stop staring,” Roadhog ordered. Junkrat looked up at him and made an ugly face the titan Junker ignored.

                “You’re absolutely no fun at all, mate.”

                “Is it always like this?” Winston asked over his shoulder.

                “Pretty much,” Roadhog answered with a shrug. “Still works…most of the time.”

                “Good to know,” the simian scientist said with a smile, although it vanished by the time he turned away. The two Junkers’ abilities weren’t in dispute – he’d seen what they could do to an entire police force – but he hadn’t expected them to be so coarse. _Never accept the world as it appears to be_ , he reminded himself, _dare to see it for what it could be_. The two Junkers, for better or worse, had chosen to join Overwatch, and maybe that would have to be enough for now.

                By the time Winston and the two Junkers entered the command center, a large, dome-like building at the center of the Watchpoint, Morrison, Lena, and Ana were already going over potential targets with Athena, each location appearing on a massive central view-screen above rows of smaller orange consoles. Zaryanova sat silently astride a backwards command chair, while Mei leaned against a plexi-glass wall that shielded stacks of glowing processors as she watched the flickering threat assessments with growing concern. Roadhog dropped Junkrat to the floor and the smaller Junker landed on his feet – mostly.

                “The Johnson Space Center?” Athena suggested.

                “Doesn’t make sense; Talon doesn’t care anything about transportation or space travel. I mean, not that we know of,” Lena answered with a reluctant shrug.

                “There are several sports complexes within the city limits, all with events scheduled this week.”

                “Domestic terrorism’s too obvious, it doesn’t fit the MO besides. They never attack without taking something.”

                “They’re not mass murderers,” Ana added as she idly twisted the end of her silver-white ponytail, “at least not yet.”

                Jack crossed his arms and angrily paced across the command center; there was something they were missing, some other target staring them right in the face.

                “Well, there _is_ the Overwatch Museum,” Athena added after a moment’s pause.

                The screen switched to an image of a sleek, white building with a curved, futuristic design and fluttering banners out front. On the broad side of the building’s front segment was a stylized Overwatch symbol. Morrison shook his head, and it could’ve been in negation, regret, or both. Winston swallowed hard.

                “Everything on display there is either decommissioned or already mass-produced by half a dozen other—”

                “Not everything, Strike Commander.”

                The view of the museum expanded, then zoomed in on a promotional display at its entrance. At the same time, the museum’s event schedule opened in a smaller window, depicting its newest exhibit.

                “The Doomfist Legacy?!” the Strike Commander growled, “Winston, I told you to call them about that!”

                “I did,” Winston confirmed, a note of annoyance creeping into his voice. “They thanked me for my time, then blocked the number.”

                “You didn’t call them back?” Morrison asked. The gorilla’s left eye twitched, and Junkrat thought he saw single yellow spark emanate from it.

                “Commander, that’s not how blocked calls work,” Lena began, but he was already headed for the door.

                “Forget it,” he grumbled, “should’ve stolen that damn thing myself years ago.”

                “Jack, you’re staying here,” Ana called, throwing her rifle over her shoulder. “Tracer, Winston, and I will go.”

                “What?” the old soldier growled, his scarred features hardening.

                “Talon already knows about the two of them, so they’re the ones going – we don’t want to tip our hand too early – and someone else has to fly the dropship.”

                “I can fly a dropship.”

                “I know that,” Ana said as she walked past him, giving his shoulder a pat, “but of the two of us, I’m the one with a better record of not being seen when I don’t wish to be. Besides, if the authorities get involved, they like us Winston and Lena a lot better than they like you!”

                The command center doors quietly closed behind the three agents, and an uncomfortable silence fell over those left behind.

                “Just a tick, what’d she mean ‘authorities?’” Junkrat asked, “I thought we all got pardons or something. Thought this was all on the level.”

                “You will.”

                “Pardons?” Mei mouthed to Aleksandra; the tall Russian just rolled her eyes.

                “’We _will_?’” Roadhog growled. Morrison’s shoulders sunk as he turned to address the Junkers directly.

                “Right now Overwatch is being privately supported by a lot of countries that are still publically enforcing the Petras Act,” he explained. “If we show up in their backyard, they can’t just tell their police forces to stand down. Until the Petras Act gets repealed…we’re outlaws. High-tech outlaws that are trying to hold the world together, but still outlaws.”

                Junkrat and Roadhog looked at one another.

                “If the two of you want out, I don’t blame you. This wasn’t what you signed up for. As soon as one of our VTOLs gets back, I can drop you wherever you want.”

                The two Junkers turned their backs and consorted in coarse, rough whispers for a full minute before they straightened up and faced the others. Roadhog crossed his arms, looking authoritative, but it was Junkrat who spoke.

                “Listen, mate,” he began, “the way ‘Hog and I see it, we’ve been in this ‘outlaw’ line since yonks ago. We’re gonna end up in the divvy van sooner or later, might as well make it for a good cause, yeah?”

                “I _think_ I understood that,” Morrison said, relief crossing his battle-marked face.

                “Means we’re still in,” Roadhog translated. He looked past the old soldier to Mei and Aleksandra; the Russian was as stoic as ever, but it appeared Mei’s expression had softened significantly.

                “Watcher Three to Gibraltar, come in Gibraltar,” Ana’s voice sounded from a nearby console.

                “Gibraltar to Watcher Three, we read you loud and clear; go ahead,” Morrison responded as he transferred the console’s UI to the main screen. Ana, strapped into the pilot’s chair, appeared at the bottom, superimposed over an aerial view of Houston, Texas as the VTOL drew closer over the Gulf of Mexico. A second screen displayed the VTOL’s forward camera feed, and the Houston skyline, filled with sleek high-rises and multi-billion-dollar corporate offices, rose over the clear blue water below them.

                “We’re approaching the city now. The police scanner’s quiet, but that doesn’t mean much,” Ana relayed. “Skies are clear too, although they could be using cloud cover like we are.”

                “Approaching—they left five minutes ago! How is this possible?” Aleksandra asked, rising from her chair in disbelief.

                “I’ll tell when you’re older,” Morrison chuckled.

                Winston paced back and forth in the cargo bay while Lena leaned into the camera’s view and squinted out of the cockpit.

                “I guess a conspicuous black helicopter might be a bit much to hope for,” she said with a shrug.

                As if on cue, a single black helicopter entered the aerial feed from the northwest, heading straight for the museum.

                “You can’t be serious,” the Strike Commander said.

                “At least they’re consistent,” Lena remarked.

                “Take us over!” Winston barked from the back of the dropship.

                Ana sighed, then jammed the flightstick to the left, setting them on an intercept course.

                “Pull up a chair, boys and girls,” Morrison boasted as he leaned back in his own seat, “you’re about to see how Overwatch does it: quick and clean.” He turned back to the console. “Stay frosty out there, agents!”

                “Taking fire!” Ana announced as the command center rang with the transmitted sound of bullets raining against the dropship’s hull. Winston, careless of the danger, yanked the ship’s side door open and bounded out with a roar, small-caliber fire bouncing harmlessly off of his armor. The aerial view showed the simian scientist’s trajectory as he leapt from the dropship to the black helicopter, and the Talon vehicle rapidly lost altitude as he barreled inside. With a whoop, Lena was out the door right after him, flashing through the air half a mile above Houston. Ana shot the cockpit camera an exasperated look.

                “Clean and frosty. Right.”

                Mei slipped her jacket off and tossed around the back of a command chair, which she pulled up next to Aleksandra’s. Roadhog sat down on one of the other chairs, and although it creaked under his weight, the sleek, open-sided seat held. Junkrat eschewed the chairs completely and plopped himself down in front, crossing his legs and leaning back on his hands like a kid watching cartoons.

                Something in the black helicopter went off and the cockpit burst into flames; Winston fell out of the side, locked in combat with one of the Talon agents, and they crashed together through the museum’s translucent roof. A blue streak and a black cloud followed them down through the shattered glass, shooting out of the chopper seconds before it exploded completely.

                “So,” Junkrat began as he sat up and rested his chin on his hands, eyes wide with excitement, “anybody got any popcorn?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As you can see, this is less of a self-contained chapter than a continuation of the previous chapter; I've been debating about whether to keep releasing chapters in parts or just take longer between releases for the sake of having each chapter be self-contained, but I'm not sure. Let me know in the comments if you'd rather have longer individual 'traditional' chapters or more frequent-but-shorter updates!
> 
> On a second note, you'll notice this chapter ends with the beginning of events in the [Cinematic Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0/); I'm debating about writing an adaptation of that scene in order to bring my own Overwatch interpretation into line with Official Blizzard Canon, but that's obviously not what you're all necessarily here for. If I was to do it, it would be its own independent story that would line up but not exist as part of this story, at least as far as AO3's system is concerned.
> 
> Either way, expect SOMETHING next week.
> 
> Lastly, thank you so much for all the support and positive vibes in the comments section; I know neither of these ships are the most popular things in the world, but it's great to have such supportive people along for the ride. Thanks!


	4. The Match

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the one you've been waiting for: Zarya vs. Roadhog! But not how you expect. Reinhardt yells a lot, Genji acts mysterious, the Junker boys finally visit the pool, and Zarya makes a video call to her mother!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). Make sure to check the bottom notes for a change in the first chapter.
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                The second dropship arrived just after the Museum strike force returned, and it almost went unnoticed through all the celebrating on the landing pad. What couldn’t go unnoticed, however, was the broad-shouldered, nearly seven-and-a-half foot-tall knight in shining armor who tromped down the ship’s ramp, the ground shaking slightly with every suit-augmented step; his right arm shouldered an idling rocket hammer bigger than its wielder, and his left arm was extended to the sky, waving with every hearty, slightly-distorted laugh that emanated from the orange, T-shaped visor on the front of his crowned helmet.

                “My friends!” he bellowed in greeting, his German accent almost unbearably thick, “if this is the reception an unsuccessful mission receives, I cannot imagine the revelry that awaits a successful one!”

                “Reinhardt!”

                Tracer blinked past the surprised Aleksandra and Mei, and into the armored giant’s arms; the massive rocket hammer fell forgotten to the ground, and the armored knight returned her embrace with surprising care, cautious not to crush the much-smaller operative even as the suit’s servos and nanofibers contracted to express the wearer’s affection.

                “I gotta get me one a’ those chronal accela-whatsis,” Junkrat whispered to Roadhog. “Y’know how many things I could blow up at the same time?”

                “Not happening,” Roadhog grunted back, sounding both stern and sympathetic simultaneously, and Junkrat’s face sank into a pout.

                “No luck with the pilot?” Winston asked, his post-mission good mood dimming somewhat.

                Reinhardt gingerly put Tracer down and shook his head sadly. A soft, smooth voice from behind the towering ex-Crusader disagreed.

                “She _will_ join us, but not this day.”

                Behind the black lenses of his gas mask, Roadhog’s eyes widened as he noticed, for the first time, the diminutive figure behind Reinhardt. Short as he was (at least in comparison to the armored giant), the figure was covered in sleek silver-and-white armor and glowing green exhaust ports, and even appeared to be wearing a long, flowing grey bandanna, so – by most standards – he should’ve been almost impossible to miss, and yet it was the first Roadhog had seen of him.

                “Gotta clean these lenses,” Roadhog muttered to himself.

                “Come again?” Junkrat asked.

                “Nothing.”

                “Her heart still belongs to South Korea;” the mysterious, visored individual continued. “They have suffered much. She is young, and cannot yet see the bigger picture.” He approached Winston, and the other operatives, even Jack Morrison, parted to let him through. He placed a mechanical hand on the simian scientist’s shoulder. “A frog in a well does not know the great sea, but she will in time.” He motioned to Aleksandra, and she nodded back curtly, her expression utterly blank. Winston grunted in understanding, although the look of puzzlement that crept over Junkrat’s features signified the proverb had been lost on at least one present party. “Besides,” the masked man added as his manner lightened, “I beat her at Fighters of the Storm, and she will want a rematch.”

                “Bah, you should’ve let her win!” Reinhardt grumbled.

                “I was once young, and thought as she does,” he replied. “To her, a defeated opponent holds no interest.”

                “You were once youn—you’re 35, you little—!” the giant ex-Crusader sputtered, and the group burst into laughter.

                The mysterious masked man strode from the laughing agents over to Junkrat and Roadhog, who were standing somewhat removed from the rest of the party, not quite feeling part of the family yet. He gave a polite bow, which Junkrat awkwardly imitated. Roadhog just nodded.

                “Genji Shimada,” the ninja introduced himself. “Stealth and infiltration specialist.”

                “Oooh, Morrison probably wants us to get some tips from you,” Junkrat began, his expression brightening. “We’re, uh, not so good at the sneaky-sneaky stuff.”

                “Ah, the recruits!” Reinhardt bellowed, and he barreled over to Genji. “I am Reinhardt, Reinhardt Wilhelm!” He extended his massive gauntlet, and though it dwarfed Junkrat’s orange, metal hand, Roadhog’s own oversized paw seemed, for once, strangely proportional.

                “Reinhardt is one of the greatest warriors I have ever known,” Genji explained warmly, “and he is ‘not so good at the sneaky-sneaky stuff’ either, so you are in good company.”

                “Ha, no need for stealth when you’ve got a shield and a hammer!” He beat his chest twice with his fist, and the thick metal clanged in response. “But Herr Shimada sells himself short! He is as swift as a dagger in the dark, and twice—no, three times as deadly!”

                “Is that right?” Junkrat asked, straightening up as much as he comfortably could. “Well, Roadhog an’ me are pretty dangerous too, mate.”

                “I know!” Reinhardt exclaimed, oblivious to the Australian bomber’s posturing. “I have seen your exploits on the television! Between your grand heists and your love of fire,” he said with a grin, pointing at Junkrat’s still-slightly-smoking hair, “perhaps you are part dragon!”

                Junkrat laughed nervously.

                “Ah, but you are part of Overwatch now,” the towering ex-Crusader stated, and he clapped a gigantic gauntlet on Roadhog’s shoulder. For once, the recipient of the gesture didn’t fall over. “A man’s past is nothing compared to what he has yet to accomplish!”

                “Indeed,” Genji agreed with a nod. A flicker of sunlight caught Roadhog’s attention, and he saw – again, for the first time – the grey-green ninja resting his hand on the grip of his back-mounted wakizashi. Behind his black leather mask, Roadhog’s concealed features twisted into a frown; the little ninja had somehow kept _both_ of the swords mounted across his shoulders and lower back completely hidden from the titanic Junker until he’d _wanted_ them to be noticed. Roadhog wasn’t sure whether to be angry, impressed, or both. In any case, he’d have to keep both eyes open.

                But he wasn’t the only one silently observing.

                Aleksandra watched the four men interact from a few feet away while simultaneously listening to the details of the post-mission conversation behind her; she’d seen the mission itself happen, so she glossed over most of the particulars from Winston and Tracer, instead focusing on reading lips – or at least she would have, if three of the four men hadn’t been wearing masks of various sorts. Instead, she was forced to focus on body language. Roadhog was less ponderously menacing than he’d been that morning – clearly dialing back the monster within to make a better impression – but Junkrat was obviously intimidated: the two Junkers were used to being the big fishes, she had no doubt, but meeting a legend like Reinhardt could quickly put things in perspective. However, it was Genji who surprised her the most, and although his simple, hand-resting gesture had been subtle, it was undoubtedly deliberate, and Roadhog’s slightly-cocked head signaled the message, whatever it was, had been received. _Strange_ , she thought, _Genji is almost insufferably accepting. What is it about the two that's raised his ire, but apparently not Reinhardt's?_

                She had no time to consider the question further, as the four of them soon made their way back to the main group.

                “Come! Regale me with your tale!” Reinhardt commanded, his arms rising like an orchestra conductor’s. “Tell me of the Battle of the Museum so we may properly revel in your glory!”

                Tracer and Winston look at each other in mock hesitation.

                “Well…” Winston began.

                “…if we _have_ to,” Tracer finished, and they launched into the recounting. The other agents, even the ones who had seen the battle on-screen, watched and listened with rapt attention, offering only the occasional exclamation; there was something about firsthand accounts that camera feeds didn’t quite convey. There, in a cluster on the landing pad, Roadhog and Junkrat began to feel something like familiarity, something like home. Being heroes was a world away, a concept in name only at that point, but war stories they understood, they respected, they enjoyed.

                A few minutes in, Morrison circled around the group to Roadhog and Junkrat.

                “You know how this one ends; why don’t I take you around the rest of the compound?” he asked. Junkrat reluctantly agreed, and Roadhog followed silently, wishing they could stay behind and listen, at least up to the part where Winston power-bombed that moron in the trench-coat into the floor. He liked that part.

                Aleksandra watched them over her shoulder, then turned back to Tracer and Winston. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Genji’s lime-green visor turning back to the group as well.

+++

                The second leg of the tour was not nearly as eventful as the first, to Junkrat’s chagrin and Roadhog’s relief. The Strike Commander led them around hangars filled with tarp-covered fuel tanks and mothballed transports, past locked-off research labs filled with dimmed lights and equipment that wouldn’t see release to the public for at least another decade, and through numerous target ranges and sparring rooms, their walls covered in panels that hid every type of training equipment possible. Even after years of abandonment, the facility was still on the cutting edge in comparison to just about anywhere else, but without a full staff – or even the few agents who had returned to active duty – an air of melancholy hung over the orange walls and idling blue monitors. Overwatch was once great, and, with luck, would be great again, but for the moment, the Watchpoint seemed more a museum, a monument to past glories, than a staging ground for saving the world.

                The tour finally took them back to the barracks, and Morrison showed them to their quarters at the end of the second floor.

                “Junkrat, this one’s yours,” he said, motioning to a door on the left. “Roadhog, you’re right next-door.”

                Junkrat confidently strode up to the entrance, but the door remained stationary. There was no handle to be seen, either.

                “Use your ha—er, left hand,” Morrison explained, and he pointed to a small black circle on the wall next to the doorway. Junkrat wiggled his organic hand in front of it, and the door slid open with a quiet hum. The short Junker turned back to Roadhog with wide eyes and a giddy smile.

                “It knows!” he squealed excitedly.

                “They have biometric scanners hotels now, you know. Haven’t either of you stayed at a hotel?”

                Junkrat gave the Strike Commander a blank stare.

                “Nevermind. In we go.”

                The suite began with a hallway that led into a kitchen area filled with stainless steel appliances, and sporting a table with two chairs at the center; Morrison explained it had the same food-synthesizing technology as the dining hall, but also had cooking capabilities in case they wanted to fix meals the old-fashioned way. From there, another hallway to the left led down past a full bathroom (a standing shower and shiny black tiles) to the suite’s bedroom, which also possessed a walk-in closet. Of chief interest to Junkrat was the exceedingly customizable bed, which could be modified both in size (double to King) and firmness. Unbeknownst to the other two, Junkrat resolved to try jumping on it as soon as he could get away with it. The right side of the hallway opened up to a small living space with a couch, a television, and a few empty shelves; behind the television was a sliding glass door that led to a small balcony overlooking the sea, and across from it was its brother from next door. Blue water stretched out below them beyond the view of human eyes, and Junkrat whistled.

                “Ain’t partial to the big blue myself, but that’s not a bad view,” he said. “Say, could we di—”

                “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Morrison interrupted as he turned to go back inside. “From this height, you might as well be hitting concrete.”

                Junkrat turned to Roadhog with a mischievous eyebrow raised.

                “Nope,” was all the towering Junker grunted. Junkrat stuck his tongue out, but followed Morrison back down the hall.

                “Roadhog, your suite’s the same, just reversed,” the Strike Commander explained as the door of Junkrat’s quarters closed behind them. “I’ll be honest, I don’t really see the point of all these bells and whistles, but I’m sure it’ll be a nice change of pace for you two. Anyway, I’m just down the hall; Dr. Zhou, Dr. Zeigler, and Zaryanova are too. Everyone else is up on the third floor. First floor is that Olympic-sized swimming pool you’ve heard so much about; there’s also a sauna too, if you’re interested.”

                “All Watchpoints this cushy?” Roadhog asked.

                “No,” Morrison replied, and there was a note of approval in his delivery of that fact. “Gibraltar is as close to a home base as we have access to right now. Most of the others are a lot less, well, elaborate.”

                “You don’t like it here?” Junkrat asked, somewhat surprised.

                “Not really my style,” the old soldier answered with a shrug. “Give me a cot and a closet and I’m good to go. This sort of extravagance…” His voice trailed off, and Roadhog saw the look of a man who is suddenly very far away from his current situation cross Morrison’s face for a moment. “It’s just not my style. Anyway, that’s enough jawing from me for today. I’ll see you two at dinner.” He walked down the hallway for a moment before turning back. “And try not to get on anyone else’s bad side, alright?” he added.

                “Aye-aye, sir! I’ll be on me best behavior!” Junkrat reassured him, giving a clumsy salute.

                “That’s not saying much,” Roadhog said with a chuckle.

                Jack Morrison wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sigh, but as he walked down the barrack stairs, he couldn’t entirely suppress a smile.

                Junkrat and Roadhog spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the barracks; passing the sauna without a second thought, they dipped their feet (though only their feet) in the swimming pool, kicking the chlorinated water idly as the events of the past twenty-four hours began to settle on them, the internally-lit blue water casting weird shadows across their faces with every ripple. They didn’t talk a great deal, but after knowing each other for nearly twenty-three years, there wasn’t a great deal to say – at least, not at that moment. At that moment, they were both still processing.

                “What do you think?” Roadhog finally asked, one of the few times when he was the one to break the silence between them.

                “I think…” Junkrat began, his face scrunched in consideration before relaxing into a roguish smile, “…I think I’d like to find out if that shiny machine in the tucker hall can make a Crownie. Or Boba. Either way.”

+++

                The dining hall was large, able to seat well over fifty people at maximum capacity, with a line of food synthesizers covering most of the far wall except for the back portion, which housed a bar-like area with taps and stools. The rest of the hall was paneled glass, and the final rays of the setting sun threw orange and purple light across the empty chairs and tables. The whole place might've felt quite lonely if not for the mixture of cheering, drinking, and face-stuffing taking place at the far end.

                Reinhardt and Genji’s lack of success had been all but forgotten, not least because the increasingly-tipsy former of the two had been trying to get the also-increasingly-tipsy Tracer to recount her mission yet again. When he failed in this solitary effort, he then attempted to get everyone else as sloshed as possible so the teeming, tipsy horde might convince her to retell it with as much embellishment as possible, and because Reinhardt (who looked like a distinguished, bearded gentleman from Shakespearean times from the neck up and a bioengineered super-soldier from the shoulders down) was a gigantic German who radiated goodwill and high decibels in equal amounts, he was much more successful in this endeavor. Winston, who did not drink, satisfied himself with copious quantities of bananas, peanut butter, and quiet laughter as Tracer finally hopped up on a table and told of the battle against “Mister Guns-from-his-Arse” and “that slinky blueberry tart” yet again.

                Unfortunately for Junkrat, the dining hall synthesizers could make neither of his aforementioned drinks – at least not to his satisfaction – so he ended up grudgingly sipping a nondescript, amber-colored beverage at the bar area while most of the night’s revelry happened around him. Roadhog sat beside him, his gas mask pulled up above his mouth to drink his own ambiguous alcohol; he was less put out than his pickier younger partner, but after three glasses of the stuff, he wasn’t nearly as drunk as he wanted to be.

                As Tracer’s story finished, the floodgates opened to other tales of battle and daring, and as the night went on, the stories gradually became more and more outlandish as each teller attempted to one-up the previous recalling: the Omnic Reinhardt battled across the forests of Germany had grown three houses in size since it was last heard from, Jack Morrison put at least twice as many members of Los Muertos in the hospital, and Angela had gone on to treat an entire village afflicted with what she passingly referred to as “double cancer.”

                The stories eventually crossed the threshold where not even an inebriated mind could preserve its credulity, and so matters turned to physical contests, particularly those of the arm-wrestling variety. From the outset, it was clear that Aleksandra was the one to beat. She had changed out of her combat armor and now wore black fatigues and a tight grey t-shirt, but with her sleeves rolled up to show off the ‘guns,’ she was just as intimidating: her muscles flexed with every movement, bulging even as she scratched her nose and ran her fingers through her short hair, and her perfectly manicured, neon-pink nails only served to further enhance the aura of raw power she exhibited.

                Angela, her courage significantly fortified by liquid reserves, lost the contest barely half a second after it began, and Aleksandra very nearly flipped the Swiss doctor over the table in the process. Ana, who had been sipping tea all night and was both sober _and_ aware of her own limits, politely declined to be next. Aleksandra eyed Tracer next, but the sporty brunette stammered a drunken digression, her face slightly redder than before. Morrison sat down with the air of a man who already knows he has lost, but he put up a valiant fight, his enhanced physique enabling him to make significant headway in pushing Aleksandra’s arm down before she beat him with a sudden surge. Mei was next, and Junkrat turned on his stool to watch as the climatologist rounded the table to sit in front of Aleksandra; she still had her arctic gear on, but had tied the jacket around her ample waist, revealing a tank-top with barely-visible hexagonal patterns across it that hugged her upper body closer than her robe had that morning. Junkrat drained his glass.

                Mei came the closest yet to beating Aleksandra, but only because the Russian soldier let her: taking a page from Reinhardt’s showmanship, Aleksandra grimaced and groaned theatrically as her wrist was pushed closer and closer to the dreaded table surface, and Mei was laughing so hard that Aleksandra was practically pulling the climatologist’s hand over on top of her own. When the Russian made her inevitable comeback, it was with as much dramatic fanfare and effort as possible; she strained and pushed, her legs shifting for more leverage, and by the time she finally got Mei’s arm down, the rest of the agents, Mei included, were in hysterics. As Aleksandra stood up and held her arm in mock agony, even Roadhog chuckled.

                Genji was next, and after a stiff moment between him and Aleksandra, they began. As small as he was, the ninja had the strength of cybernetic engineering behind him, and he put up the best genuine effort so far that night – the chatter of competition dropped to a hush, and every agent watched with keen interest. What Roadhog and Junkrat did not know was that was the first night Genji had chosen to participate in the contest, and although both he and Aleksandra had their own matters between them, that is a story for another time.

                Gradually, the servos in the ninja’s elbow and upper arm began to whine, and Aleksandra pushed back hard. If he could have rallied, he chose not to, and his knuckles touched the table a second later, ending the round. He rose to his feet without a word, and gave a polite bow. Aleksandra nodded with just the faintest hint of a smile.

                And then Reinhardt sat down.

                The other agents quickly arranged themselves behind one contestant or the other; Angela, Mei, Tracer, and Ana stood confidently behind Aleksandra, while Morrison and Genji stood somewhat less-confidently behind Reinhardt. Winston, wisely, chose not to take sides, and opened another jar of peanut butter. Small bills were exchanged as bets were placed. This was the main event, or so those present that night thought.

                “Are you ready this time, old man?” Aleksandra asked, one eyebrow raised ominously.

                “Bah, you’ve had warm-up rounds!” the ex-Crusader groused, his white beard doing nothing to hide the eager smile beneath.

                “Well, if you’d like to war—” she began with mock sympathy.

                “No!” he bellowed, slamming his arm on the table. “No more stalling from you, little Heidenelke! Tonight I regain my honor!”

                “You’ll regain that wrist brace I had to put you in after last time,” Angela muttered before hiccupping loudly.

                “Nonsense!”

                “Have it your way, old man,” Aleksandra cautioned with a grin, and she clasped her hand in his, lining her arm up. Reinhardt was a mountain of a man, and both his arm and hand dwarfed Aleksandra’s, but as the contest began, size seemed to account for increasingly less. At first they seemed evenly matched: their hands stood locked, slightly shaking with the effort of both contestants, and even waving to one side or the other, but as the seconds turned into minutes, Reinhardt began to sweat and Aleksandra began to smile. The older man’s breathing became more ragged and shallow as he poured all of his strength into his right arm, and although Aleksandra’s nostrils flared, her own accelerated exhalations were much less evident. Slowly, agonizingly, Reinhardt’s arm began to tilt backward. As soon as it moved more than an inch, the old warrior began to grunt under his breath, his limits taxed and failing. Even his trimmed white beard quivered with effort. Aleksandra’s stare intensified, and her smile broke into a victorious grin; there was blood in the water, and she was moving in for the kill. The ninja and the Strike Commander patted Reinhardt on the back and wiped the sweat from the scar across his left eye, chanting encouragement all the while, but as the future winner became more apparent, they were drowned out by the wild wooping of Tracer, Mei, and Angela. Ana simply sipped her tea with a knowing smile, and that outraged Reinhardt the most of anything.

                At a forty-five degree angle, the ex-Crusader began to bray like a beast, adjusting his position to gain any sort of counterbalance, but Aleksandra’s onslaught would not be stopped, and it only increased in intensity the closer to the table his wrist came. He kept his arm a handful of centimeters above the table for a few precious seconds, but with a final roar he gave in, his arm slamming against the table hard enough to tilt it to one side. Genji and Morrison groaned, and the girls cheered, dancing around Aleksandra as she put her arms out and basked in their praise. Reinhardt threw his hands to the sky in despair and moaned aloud.

                “Inconceivable! Beaten twice in a month by the same woman! Oh, if Balderich was alive to see this, he would be turning over in his grave!” He stomped out of the dining hall, his grumbling descending into unintelligible German expletives, and Aleksandra turned back to Ana with a worried expression.

                “Oh, he’ll be fine in a moment,” she said, and gave the younger Russian woman a wink with her good eye. “He’s a big baby.”

                Aleksandra nodded, her proud grin returning, and she leapt atop the table.

                “Is there no one left to challenge me?” she taunted, “Is there not one among you who can stand against me?!” The women chanted ‘Zarya! Zarya! Zarya!’ and the men shook their heads, both of their arms still sore from the first round. She turned to the two new recruits at the bar, and pointed at Junkrat. “You there! Junk-man! Care to test your strength against the might of Mother Russia?” she growled as she flexed her arms, emboldened by victory and quite a bit of synthetic vodka. Junkrat quickly declined.

                “Already lost one arm, thanks,” he said, wiggling the orange fingers on his prosthetic hand. The others laughed, and Mei stuck her arms underneath her armpits, making a ‘chicken’ motion, but the smaller Junker had no intention of willfully jumping into the meat-grinder that was an arm-wrestling match with Aleksandra Zaryanova.

                “How about you, big man?” Aleksandra crowed, turning her attention to Roadhog. “Are you still so strong without a scrapgun and a hook to lean on?”

                Roadhog drained his glass with one last swig, and rotated in his seat, pulling his gas mask down as he turned. Aleksandra caught a glimpse of a strong chin covered in white scruff, and a wide mouth with strangely exaggerated lower canines poking up over his upper lip, then it was hidden by black leather once more.

                “Only if you’re up to it,” he grunted.

                A hushed, excited ‘oooooooooh’ made its way through the other agents. Aleksandra snorted once, and dropped to the floor, a determined smile across her lips.

                “I’ve been up to it since this morning, _comrade_ ,” she sneered.

                “What’re we waitin’ for, then?”

                Roadhog ambled over to the table and stood face to face with the Russian woman; Reinhardt had been taller than her as well, but the effect was entirely different this time. He was wide as a truck, with arms nearly as big as her own torso, and his belly jiggled less than it should have; he was grossly obese, no doubt, but behind that layer of fat had to be inches upon inches of sheer muscle. He’d evidently not showered at all since his arrival, for he still stunk of gasoline and gunpowder and testosterone and alcohol from the bar, but now she thought she also picked up a hint of chlorine as well. He was fat and smelly and unkempt and he revolted her on every level. The more of him she took in, the more Aleksandra felt it was less of a man and more of a wild animal, some mad beast, that faced her now, but she had never backed down from a contest in her life and that evening would be no exception. She peered into the black lenses of his mask, searching for any sign of weakness, any trace of the human within, but found only blank glass staring back, like locking eyes with a shark.

                She pointed to the angular tattoo on her left shoulder that read ‘512,’ and grinned.

                “Do you know what this means?”

                Roadhog shrugged.

                “My lifting record. 512 kilograms.”

                “Good for you.”

                “How much do you weigh, Roadhog?”

                “Bit rude, innit?” Junkrat cut in.

                “’Bout 250 kilograms,” Angela hiccupped as she leaned on Ana. “Checked this morning.”

                “I could lift you, _Roadie_ ,” Aleksandra taunted, her forest-green eyes narrowing. “I could lift you with _one hand_.”

                “That’ll be real useful if I’m ever on top a’ you,” Roadhog growled, and he sat down. Eyebrows rose around the room, and Aleksandra’s cheeks flushed bright red. “Now we doin' this or what?” He put his arm up, and the table creaked under its weight. Aleksandra scowled and slammed her arm down on the table against his, locking hands with her opponent.

                _Brown sand fell through the wooden cracks on the table, shaken loose by her setting her arm down, and onto Mako’s work boots – not that it mattered, since they were already caked in dried mud. The half-broken ceiling fan did nothing but stir the dust in the air further, but Mako would’ve gladly asphyxiated before he sneezed in front of her. Only a few of the regulars were watching; everyone else was nursing their beers, humming along to the radio, or both._

_“You sure ‘bout this, whacker?” she asked, full lips curling into a dangerous smile. She ran her free hand through the curly black deathhawk atop her head, nonchalantly fluffing up the parts that weren’t pulled back into the long ponytail._

_“Damn right,” Mako answered, trying to sound as tough as he could. “I win, one drink – I pay – five minutes, and a fair go.”_

_She leaned in close, and the smell of alcohol and petrol became more choking than the dust. Her black-nailed grip tightened uncomfortably around his hand for emphasis._

_“I win,” she hissed as her emerald eyes leered into his own, “you chuck a yewy and I never see your wuss mug again. Maybe a beatin’ for your trouble.”_

_“Deal.”_

_The rest of the gang, a wall of black leather and spikes crowded around them like a prison, nodded and grunted, some in approval, others in disbelief._

_“Alright, you all witnessed it,” she said, pointing up, then back to Mako. “Now let’s get down to the business of me kickin’ your arse.”_

                Aleksandra struggled against Roadhog’s impossible grip, barely able to move his massive hand a centimeter before it returned to the center. More infuriating than her lack of progress was the fact that he didn’t seem to be trying at all: he wasn’t pushing back, he was merely stopping her, stalling her, exhausting her energy while he just sat there like the fat bastard he was. He wasn’t even looking at her – the pig! – his head had lolled to one side and pointed down, as if he was thinking about something completely different, as if he was sleeping. She could hear the cheers of her fellow agents behind her, but their cries were muffled as the sound of her own beating heart filled her ears. Junkrat alone stood behind Roadhog, egging on the titanic Junker. For all the life Roadhog showed, he might as well have been cheering for a dead man.

                _She tossed her head back and laughed. He’d heard her laugh before, from across the bar, but at this proximity it was like hearing a loon falling through a chute filled with broken glass. He loved it._

_“You’re stronger than I reckoned, you mug!” she crowed, their hands wavering back and forth as both fought for dominance. Judging by how strained he felt compared to her relaxed demeanor, he could guess who would win that first stage. He’d known he was going to lose since the idea first came into his mind several weeks ago. It didn’t matter then and it didn’t matter now._

_“Whatcha farm out there in the fields to get so strong, huh?” one of the leather-clad spectators taunted._

_“Hogs,” Mako growled through clenched teeth._

_“Hogs, ooooooh,” she parroted, feigning being impressed. She leaned in closer again, close enough to kiss, but Mako didn’t have a death wish. Not yet, anyway. “Must take a lotta strength to hold’em down on those lonely nights when you fancy a naughty, huh? Oink oink!”_

_The rest of her gang took up the chant and began oinking at Mako, but he just rolled his eyes._

_“You talk an awful lot for someone in road leathers,” he taunted as casually as he could._

_“Yeah? You talk an awful lot for a losin’ man.”_

                “Су́кин сын!”

                Sweat beads formed on Aleksandra’s brow as she struggled against the Junker’s arm. She had finally made some scant headway, but every centimeter was a battle, and more worrying, she felt surprisingly little resistance from Roadhog; he could’ve been luring her into a trap, waiting for her to put so much effort behind a single push that her defense would crumble from a sharp counterattack, or letting her think she was winning long enough to drop her guard, or any number of other things. His masked head still hung idly to the side, and she thought back to his strange(er) behavior earlier that day. What was going on behind those black lenses?

                _“Ooh, he’s losin’ it! He’s losin’ it, boss!”_

_“Arm’s goin’, whacker!” she taunted, licking her lips. “You don’t let me through, gonna break it right off!”_

_“Buckley’s chance!” Mako spat, but he knew she was right._

_She had him at about a 45 degree angle, and his arm was shaking, sweat from his hand staining her leather glove. The pain in his shoulder and forearm were unbearable, like getting his arm slowly pulled off, and he’d bitten his lip so hard that a trickle of blood was running down his chin – which stung like the devil thanks to the sweat on his face – but still, impossibly, he held. Her eyes flashed between his failing grip and his face, and her expression softened just a degree._

_“Tell you what: you throw in the towel now, I won’t have my boys here rearrange your ribs, yeah?”_

_Mako said nothing, his face fixed into a mask of determination._

_“Oh come on, now!” He saw that she was sweating too, although she was much farther from losing than he was. “Drop the show pony act!”_

_No response._

_“You want me to break it?!” she growled, grabbing him by the collar of his work shirt with her free hand. “I’ll do it!”_

_“Gonna have to!” he choked, “’cause I ain’t losing you!”_

_She roared, and threw all of her strength to the right. The front part of his forearm bent to the side with a nauseating crack._

                Roadhog’s head suddenly snapped back up, and Aleksandra felt her stomach drop like a stone. His arm had just passed the 45 degree mark, but would budge no further. If his grip had been merely stubborn before, now it was like pushing against solid steel – and that was before the solid steel began to push back. All of Aleksandra’s strength seemed meaningless against Roadhog’s arm, which tilted back up, then finally forward, completely unaffected by every effort she made, as if she wasn’t even trying. She grabbed the table, cursed under her breath, and changed her seating, but it counted for nothing. The mood in the room shifted as her hand drew closer and closer to the table. Morrison, at the back of the group, attempted to slide his bet over to Roadhog’s side of the table, but Ana slapped his hand away.

                A hush fell over the dining hall as Aleksandra’s hand hovered barely an inch above the white dining table. She gritted her teeth, and her pink-nailed fingers dug into Roadhog’s leather glove, but his terrible grip was inescapable. The last portion of her strength failed, and her hand hit the table with a smack that seemed as loud as a thunderclap. There were gasps all around – except for Junkrat, who collected to the winnings off the table while humming smugly to himself.

                “What? What is this?!” Reinhardt bellowed, his voice muffled by the glass where he had been watching from outside. The German giant ran around the side of the dining hall and through the entrance, his eyes wide in disbelief. “I missed it? What happened?!”

                Roadhog rose to his feet and turned to Reinhardt.

                “I won,” he grunted.

                In her mind, Aleksandra had tackled Roadhog to the floor, straddled him, ripped off his mask, and was currently smashing whatever horrid thing beneath passed for a face into an even uglier mish-mash of broken pieces, but in reality, she stood up and, after a moment’s hesitation, offered her still-throbbing hand. Roadhog took it, although she could tell he was being careful and intentionally _not_ squeezing back. That annoyed her even more.

                “What happened, old knight” Aleksandra answered coolly, “is I have found a new dragon to slay.” She smiled at the towering Junker, not with any sense of camaraderie, but the way a predator bares its teeth when it catches the scent of prey on the wind. Roadhog’s face was hidden, but the corners of the mask around his cheeks rose slightly, and she knew he was smiling back in just the same way.

                The giant Junker made a noise, and not even Junkrat could tell if it was a snort or a chuckle. It was, however, enough to defuse the situation, and the final drinks of the evening were quickly filled, although there was a fair share of grousing about lost bets to go along with the clinking of glasses. Aleksandra discreetly kept her right hand around a glass full of ice water, while Roadhog shared a toast with the other operatives before excusing himself from the party and heading for the door. Junkrat, ill-disposed to leave a party and perfectly happy to bask in his older partner’s glory, reluctantly followed him out, suppressing a yawn until he’d reached the cafeteria exit. They’d both been up since morning of the previous day, and such excitement could only keep them awake for so long.

                “I had him,” Aleksandra insisted, “I _had_ him!”

                “Well,” Mei hesitantly said, “maybe we can blame this one on Talon too.” Aleksandra chuckled, but shook her head. Mei looked up from her ginger ale and saw Junkrat standing in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder at her. She scowled at him, and he scampered out. “I wonder where Morrison dug those two up.”

                “As do I,” Aleksandra agreed.

+++

                Roadhog and Junkrat had almost made it back to the barracks when a green, t-shaped visor emerged from the shadows to confront them. Genji stepped out from behind a rock and placed himself in their path, his hand once more resting on grip of his wakizashi. Junkrat squeaked in surprise, but Roadhog merely bristled.

                “Roadhog. Junkrat.” His voice was preternaturally smooth and controlled even compared to that afternoon, the slight digitization of his tone only making him sound more like a machine.

                “Uh, Genji,” Junkrat greeted once he’d checked his pants for new stains and, luckily, found none.

                “What do you want?” Roadhog growled.

                “Peace,” Genji replied cryptically. “I know the two of you have taken part in anti-Omnic hostilities in the past. I pray that your presence here now indicates that chapter of your life is closed.”

                Roadhog grunted and brushed past him.

                “Shedding one’s past is no simple thing, but I can offer help if you are willing to accept,” the ninja called out. Roadhog kept walking.

                “Listen, mate,” Junkrat hissed, still standing behind Genji, “I don’t know what you _think_ you know about Omnics, but—”

                “Let’s go, Junkrat,” Roadhog interrupted like an impatient parent, and Junkrat had to content himself with an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture as he stalked past the silver ninja.

                “Roadhog! Junkrat!” Genji shouted, and his voice took on a hard edge. The two Junkers, against their better instincts, paused and faced him. “There must be some thread of good will within you, otherwise you would not be here,” he cautioned, “but if your path leads to further harming of Omnics, you will find me blocking the way.”

                “Later, Shimada,” Roadhog grumbled, and the two Junkers turned back to the barracks, leaving Genji standing alone in the pale light of the moon.

                “Is that guy even human?” Junkrat whispered to Roadhog when he thought they were out of earshot – which they were not.

                “Gotta be,” Roadhog theorized. “No Omnic’s that sneaky.”

+++

                “So this is how our beautiful partnership ends, eh?” Junkrat asked, his lip trembling. “This is the end a’ Junkrat and Roadhog, yeah?”

                “Junkrat, I’m right next door.”

                The two of them stood in the barracks hallway in front of their respective suites.

                “Well, yeah, I know that, it’s just…” Junkrat trailed off and gave a long sniff.

                “Are you serious? Is this really a Thing?”

                Junkrat broke out into a huge grin.

                “Nah, I’m just messin’ with you, you mug!”

                Roadhog snorted, and nodded towards the door.

                “Well, bye.”

                “Bye.”

                They both stood at the door, neither one of them moving.

                “You remember how to get in?” Roadhog asked.

                “Yeah, I remember!”

                “Just wave your hand like—” Roadhog waved his hand in front of his own door, and it slid open.

                “I remember!” Junkrat snapped.

                “Good. Goodnight.”

                “G’night.”

                They still stood out in the hallway.

                “You’re not going,” Roadhog observed.

                “Maybe I’m not tired.”

                “You got bags under your eyes big as my belly.”

                “No, I don’t.”

                “Junkrat?”

                “What?”

                “Go to bed.”

                “I don’t wa—”

                “Now.”

                “Fine.”

                Junkrat quickly swiped his hand and across the biometric scanner and slipped inside his suite. The door closed behind him, but Roadhog paused in his own doorway. After a second or two, the other door opened and Junkrat craned his head back out into the hallway.

                “G’night, Roadie!”

                “Goodnight, Junkrat.”

                The door closed behind Roadhog, and he shut the lights off in the suite with a wide hand across the line of switches on the wall, leaving the rooms in deep blue darkness beyond the occasional shaft of moonlight. With a sigh of relief, he pried the mask off of his face and let it drop to the floor, closing his eyes as he took a few steps forward, then turned right. He walked through the suite with his eyes shut, the layout from the earlier tour memorized and reversed, and unbuckled each piece of armor as he went, letting them fall to the floor along his path: first the harness, then the shoulderpads, then the kneepads, then the boots, then the belt, then his bracelets and armwraps, and finally his hair-tie. By the time he reached the bedroom, he was only wearing his pants and socks, and lacking the energy to remove those, he turned on his heel and fell back into the bed with a yawn. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, his left hand feeling for the bed’s controls; the room was the darkest one in the suite, with only a dim blue clock for illumination, but it still felt too bright, too busy. All of the detail came at once: the shine of the ceiling panels, the fibers of the carpet, the shadows cast by the furniture, the deafening sound of his own breathing. It was too distracting, too much, and he squinted his eyes shut again. His fingers found the bed controls, and it expanded and enveloped him as he set it for maximum size and softness. Oh, that was nice. That was real nice. His bare stomach felt strangely cold without anyone leaning against it, but those deep cushions were making him fast forget.

                He opened an eye, just one, and looked around the room. The world vibrated, practically shook with life even though he was completely alone, but he told himself it would pass. It always passed eventually. He’d been wearing the mask too often – that was all – gotten too reliant on the way it shut the world out. It would pass. It would pass. His right eye felt dry, and he closed it with every intention of opening it again, but that didn’t happen. He kept it closed, and the vibrating world faded away into a dusty black haze.

                _Mako fell to the floor, grabbing his shattered forearm, and grunting in pain._

_“This when we kick him in, boss?” one of the bikers asked, stamping his spiked black boot on the dirty floor._

_She glared down at him, looking like she was seriously considering delivering the kicking herself instead._

_“Forget it, just—just call an ambo or somethin’, alright? Y’see his arm? Crikey, he’s done,” she spat, cracking her knuckles. “Was it worth it, you idiot? Lost a bet and now your bloody arm’s broken too! Shit, you’re a loony.”_

_“Didn’t lose,” he coughed, trying to hold back tears, trying to still look tough. “Hand didn’t touch the table, I didn’t lose.”_

_She knelt above him, anger flashing across her face, and hauled him up by his collar._

_“You pullin’ my leg, whacker? Maybe I’ll pop that arm a’ yours off and poke the table with it, huh? Then you’ll be up the creek without a paddle!”_

_“Didn’t lose.” He grinned, and she came within a centimeter’s decision of adding a concussion to his list of injuries._

_“Fair enough, you mad bastard,” she finally admitted, “but you bloody well didn’t win. So I’m gonna let you keep drinkin’ here, how’s that for meetin’ in the middle?”_

_“Your name,” Mako croaked, his mouth uncomfortably dry._

_“My name? Y’know you don’t get to flap your gums my way after this, right?”_

_“I know.”_

_She looked over her shoulder at the rest of the bar; the patrons had gone back to drinking or humming or both, and the rest of her gang were standing cautiously by the door, listening for approaching sirens. She turned back and gave him a nod._

_“Jessie. My name’s Jessie,” she whispered._

_“I’m Mako.”_

_She slapped him across the face, but there was barely any force behind it._

_“I don’t give a damn what your name is, you crazy son of a bitch. We’re square now, and you’re never talkin’ to me again.”_

_She stood up and stalked over to the exit; the ambulance wail grew louder, and her long, curly hair disappeared beneath her spiked bucket helmet. She took one last look at him over the shoulder and shook her head, although he saw she was smiling, too. He leaned back on the floor and finally let the tears go as the sound of motorcycles peeling out filled his ears._

_Jessie. Her name was Jessie._

                Roadhog snorted and sat up in the bed, eyes wide. The world had stopped shaking. He got to his feet and padded down the hall; the moonlight glinting off of the waves outside felt like a strobe, and he put his hand up to block the sight. Back around the corner, stepping past his abandoned boots, up to the entrance, he slid the gas mask over his face, and opened up the apartment door.

                Outside, with his hand about to start knocking on the now-open door, was Junkrat – clad in a vibrantly clean white bathrobe and pajama bottoms.

                “This is weird, mate,” he said, and crossed his arms.

                “Yeah,” Roadhog agreed. “Come on in.” Junkrat tripped over Roadhog’s discarded harness on the way in, and the towering Junker caught him without looking. “Where’d you get the robe?”

                “In the closet, mate!” Junkrat explained as Roadhog pushed him back to his feet. The younger Junker couldn’t stop pawing the almost-indescribably soft fabric. “Just my size, too! Hey, maybe there’s one that fits you!”

                Roadhog grunted ambivalently, and wandered back to the bedroom. He fell back-first onto the bed, and Junkrat climbed into the mattress shortly afterwards, leaning up against the side of the bigger Junker’s tummy and crossing his hands behind his head.

                “Nice to be sleepin’ on a bed for once,” he said, apparently ignoring the fact that he was mostly sleeping on Roadhog. “Don’t think I could go back to floors after this.”

                “Yep,” Roadhog agreed.

                “Could get used to this hero deal, mate. Dead set.”

                “Goodnight, Junkrat.”

                “G’night, Roadie.”

                Just before he fell asleep, Roadhog pulled his mask off again and let it dangle by the straps over the side of the bed. Eventually it slipped through his fingers, but both Junkers were already snoring soundly before it hit the carpet.

+++

                Aleksandra gently drew a sixth blanket over Mei’s sleeping form curled up on her couch, and carefully pulled the thick, black-rimmed glasses off of her friend’s face before placing them quietly on the coffee table. She stood up, dimmed the lights, restarted the fireplace loop playing on the vid-screen, and checked the thermostat once more before walking out to the kitchen and retrieving an icepack from her freezer. She pressed it against her right hand and winced, more out of irritation than pain; she could manage the throbbing, but swollen fingers were slow fingers, and she would not abide slow fingers on her trigger hand.

                She walked quietly back down the hall to her bedroom, flexing her aching fingers, and clenching her jaw as her mind raced, still trying to find the error. She had expended quite a lot of effort on Reinhardt alone, but those leading up to him had barely been warm-ups; the strength of the Junker’s arm had been utterly incomprehensible, like pushing back against a slab of titanium mounted on the front of a steamroller. Even if she had gone against him completely fresh, she might not have won – she might have lost even faster. She only gained ground when he was distracted, though by what she did not know. She wanted to, though. As she closed and locked her bedroom, so did she close and lock all doubts from her mind.

                Placing the icepack on her nightstand, she pulled out her datapad and inserted a small signal filter into its USB drive before manually connecting to an IP address only she knew. A few moments of staring at a black screen, and then a pale man in a dark green uniform wearing a sleek headset appeared on the monitor.

                <Is this line secure, agent Zaryanova?> he asked, his metropolitan Russian pronunciation clear to the point of annoyance to Aleksandra’s country-raised ears.

                <Would I be contacting you if it was not?> she asked in return.

                <I know you are new to the world of espionage, but these protocols exist for a reason.>

                <Which is why I am utilizing them, _Anton_. > Her handler scowled as she used his first name, and behind her grim stare, Aleksandra enjoyed watching him squirm. <Now shall I give my report, or do you wish to lecture me further?>

                <Proceed.> he ordered through clenched teeth.

                <I have learned that Overwatch possess instantaneous or near-instantaneous means of transportation utilizing some sort of technology in their dropships. They were able to travel from Gibraltar to Houston by air in less than five minutes.>

                <Impossible!> he sputtered.

                <If you are going to second-guess everything I say, we will be here all night.>

                She disdained these KGB types; they told her to inform on the organization she was supposed to be helping, and then they had the nerve to doubt everything she reported until they saw it themselves on the news. Idiots, the lot of them, and not honor nor a spine to be found among them either. If not for the good she knew would come of her homeland accessing Overwatch technologies, she would never have agreed to such an arrangement. Well, perhaps never was too strong a word, but she certainly would not have agreed as quickly in the first place.

                <Very well, continue.>

                <I inquired as to the origins and workings of the technology, but Strike Commander Morrison informed me that he would ‘tell me when I was older.’ I am unsure if he was being cautious or simply difficult.>

                <Morrison has long been a thorn in our side. If you kept us better aware of his movements, perhaps we could—>

                <Finish that sentence and our business is concluded, _Anton_. He is a good soldier and an honorable man. You ask me to inform, I inform. Do not test the limits of my loyalty. >

                <Do not test the limits of _our_ patience. > A vein on Aleksandra’s neck twitched in response to the barely-veiled threat. If her handler had been standing before her in person, she could’ve pulled his head off of his neck with one hand. <Have you anything else to report?>

                <Yes, one last matter.> she began, <Overwatch has recruited two new members, the mercenary team of Junkrat and Roadhog.>

                <Junkrat and Roadhog? The two madmen who stole the Crown Jewels?>

                <The same.>

                <An unexpected choice. They’ve done work for us in the past – through multiple proxies, of course – and although their methods are coarse, their results are undeniable. Keep a close eye on them, agent Zaryanova.>

                <To that end, I want all the files you have on them.>

                The agent on the other end keyed in a few commands, and a stream of downloads appeared in the bottom corner of Aleksandra’s screen.

                <It’s yours; everything we have on them for the last two or so years.>

                <Two or so years? They have been active much longer. I want _everything_. >

                The agent stared at the screen, keyed in a few more commands, and frowned.

                <That’s above your clearance, I’m afraid.>

                <Send them anyway.>

                <Agent Zaryanova, these protocols exist for a—>

                <These madmen are criminals and dangers to the world, and they are sleeping down the hall from me at this very instant. I want to know who they are and what makes them tick. If you wish for this operation to succeed, you _will_ send me their files.>

                <No guarantees.> the agent hissed after a moment’s consideration. <Anything else?>

                <No.>

                <Good. For the Motherland.>

                <For the Motherland.>

+++

                “Have you ever dealt with this kind of thing before?” Winston asked as he watched the intercepted channel close.

                “What, being called a good soldier and an honorable man? No, that doesn’t sound familiar at all.” Jack Morrison stood up and shook his head, looking more amused than disappointed. “Should’ve known it would be the Russians. Russians never get excited about anything, but as soon as we started clearing out the mothballs, didn’t they drop Miss Moscow 2076 right on our doorstep.”

                “Jack, please,” Ana pleaded. “Be serious.”

                “I _am_ serious.” Morrison sighed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “The world’s changed so much since the first time around, but I guess some things just stay the same no matter when you are.”

                “So what do we do?”

                The Strike Commander stared at the visual replay of the conversation between Aleksandra and the operative she called Anton.

                “I don’t know, Winston. We’re in uncharted waters, now. Never had anything like this on the old team.”

                “Well, this isn’t the old team,” Winston said, his lip curling. “Can we at least tell the rest of the operatives?”

                Ana stared at the simian scientist as if he’d just grown two more heads on each shoulder.

                “Absolutely not,” Morrison spat.

                “They deserve to know!” Winston insisted, his voice rising.

                “Know what, that one of them is informing on the rest? What do you think that’s going to do for unit cohesion, Winston? They’re connected by bare threads as it is, and that’s before we even count those two Junker idiots. No, nobody hears about this.”

                “And what happens when one of them finds out about it on their own, Jack?” Winston shot back, his voice lowering to a barely-contained growl. “What happens when one of them finds out we knew about it and did nothing?”

                “You mean ‘if.’”

                “I mean ‘ _when_.’”

                “Winston,” Ana began, “try to understand where we’re coming from. If this information gets out, Overwatch is finished.”

                “What?”

                “If Zarya’s cover gets blown, Russia’s going to pull her out, and then they’re going to blow _our_ cover. She’ll look like a hero behind enemy lines, and we’ll all be in jail, in hiding, or in the ground within a month,” Morrison explained. “If that long.”

                “Maybe we could get her to break with the KGB and stop informing on us! She didn’t sound too excited about the arrangement in the first place,” the scientist suggested.

                “Then she goes down with us,” Ana concluded sadly.

                “Her own country would just turn on her like that?”

                “You don’t know much about Russian history, do you?” Morrison asked. Winston scowled at him.

                “We have to sit on this,” Ana sighed. “At least until—”

                “Until what, someone else finds out?” Winston grumbled.

                “Until a better option presents itself,” Morrison finished. “We don’t like any of our choices now, so we don’t choose any of them. That’s how this works.”

                “No choice at all is still a choice,” the gorilla growled. “With all due respect to the both of you, it’s secrets like these that brought down the first Overwatch. I’m not interested in seeing that happen again.”

                The simian scientist padded angrily out of the command center before Ana or Jack could come up with a retort – or an excuse.

+++

                Unfortunately for the three of them, there was a fourth observer on the line, watching from half a world away. A pair of purple eyes gleamed in the light from the screen, and a pair of purple lips drew back into a smile as mischievous as a switchblade under a table.

                “Dios mio, they're gonna _love_ this.”

___ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, these just keep getting longer and longer, huh? (That's what SHE said HO HO) Thanks for sticking around; the holidays were busy as hell, but now that we're (mostly) past them, I should be able to get back to semi-regular updates.
> 
> I know I've been focusing a lot on Mei/Junkrat, and that's no mistake - the two of them have a lot more immediate chemistry than Zarya and 'Hog do - so hopefully this'll scratch that ZaryaHog itch a little more adequately. This also more or less concludes that 'Day One' part of the story that honestly should've been just one long friggin' chapter, so after this I'm going to try to release shorter, more independent chapters, but no promises - I do love my drawn-out arcs, as you can see.


	5. The Morning After I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zarya punches a robot! Junkrat takes a shower! Mei rolls around on the floor, and Roadhog almost apologizes for something!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). Make sure to check the bottom notes for a change in the first chapter.
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                “Good morning, Aleksandra. You’re up earlier than usual.”

                “Good morning, Athena.” Even after several weeks, Aleksandra was still uncomfortable greeting a machine, even one as lifelike as Overwatch’s resident AI. Winston had assured her repeatedly that there were safeguards in place, that Athena only had control over a very limited set of functionalities, that she was only a computer assistant and not a truly self-aware artificial intelligence – the specifics didn’t matter. An oven could be trusted, a gun could be trusted, but past a certain level of complexity and independent function, a machine could not be trusted.

                “Weight training, as usual?”

                One of the floor panels nearby glowed blue, and the first hard-light blocks of a weight bench began to rise out of it. Aleksandra shook her head.

                “Combat training. Program LS_3.”

                “Ah, ‘Bastion Onslaught;’ a favorite of Reinhardt’s. Parameters: 20 combatants, mixed range.”

                “Change parameters: 30 combatants, unarmed only.”

                “30 combatants?” Athena asked, audibly surprised. “Your current record is only 17. Might I suggest—”

                “30 combatants, unarmed only. And put me somewhere snowy.”

                In an instant, Aleksandra found herself in the middle of a forest clearing, knee-deep in snow. Tall pine trees stretched to the night sky above her, still as graves, and the light beaming down from the artificial moon bathed her in crisp blue-white. The synthetic snow was frigid against her bare ankles, and neither her track pants nor her grey running shoes provided any sort of insulation against the cold. Goosebumps rose on her bare arms and beneath her tank-shirt, and Aleksandra let herself believe it, let herself get lost in the illusion of an icy Siberian night. Cold was home, and she could not keep the edges of her cheeks from rising.

                The woods were dark.

                “Aleksandra,” Athena mentioned, her West-African voice wafting through the trees like some digital night-spirit, “I can soften right-hand projection contact by 50% while still maintaining the overall integrity of the exercise. Shall I?”

                Aleksandra’s smile fell into a frown, and the knuckles on her right hand tightened beneath their white wrapping, sending little jolts of pain to her brain.

                “No,” she muttered. Aleksandra stuck her hand in the snow, and the illusion faltered as the glowing hard-light shifted to simulate the snow’s displacement. Submersed in cold, the already-dull pain faded, but the stiffness remained.

                “You are visibly injured—”

                “I pushed myself too hard last night. I’m fine.”

                “—setting unrealistic objectives—”

                “ _I_ will be the judge of that.”

                “—elevated heartrate _before_ the simulation has even begun—”

                “Your _questions_ are elevating my heartrate! _You_ are elevating my heartrate!”

                “I know I am.” Aleksandra heard something shift in Athena’s smooth tone, and a noise followed the AI’s words that sounded like a remarkably human sigh. “But I am also trying to help you.”

                Aleksandra stared straight ahead, focusing on the trees. The individual needles shimmered as the tiny hard-light blocks they were made of moved in the artificial breeze. The snow on the branches did not fall. Every trunk was exactly the same. It was all an illusion, a projection. Amazing what modern technology could do.

                “If you do not trust me,” Athena began, “then why are you asking me to run a simulation in which you could easily die with a few altered parameters?”

                “Because I trust Winston will download you onto a disc and turn it into a drink coaster if you kill me,” Aleksandra replied, only just noticing the ache in her clenched fists. “Now run the damn program.”

                Athena said nothing, but the woods before Aleksandra lit up with a host of thin, red, vertical lights, and the air was filled with the muffled sound of machinery shuffling through snow. She dropped low to the ground, up to her chest in snow, cracked her neck, and charged forward to meet the first Bastion unit as it lumbered into the clearing.

                She was within striking distance in two strides, and launched herself – feet first – at the shuffling automaton. Both shoes connected with the Bastion’s oversized upper chassis, and the machine – already ill-suited to the winter terrain – stumbled backwards briefly before falling with a noisy clank barely muffled by the snow. Aleksandra was back on her feet before the unit hit the ground, and she leapt upon it like a hungry animal. Locking her fingers around the machine’s head-like CPU, she tore it free after only a second’s worth of effort, the factory-riveted joints and insulated wires ripping free under her incredible strength. A red light flashed in her peripheral vision, and she hurled the CPU with frightening accuracy, slamming the second Bastion unit’s head to the side and partially damaging the neck socket, leaving it unable to look any direction by over its right shoulder. It clawed futilely at its head, attempting to realign its optic sensor even as it waddled in a circle, and Aleksandra smiled. A third unit stomped obliviously past its struggling brother, and her smile disappeared.

                Bending to the mechanical corpse at her feet, she grabbed one of its arms and pulled; her right hand lit up with pain, and a grunt escaped her clenched teeth as the muscles in her arms bulged with effort. By the time the limb tore loose from its socket with a gnashing hiss, the third unit had almost reached her, but she took the momentum from removing the arm and turned it into an over-the-shoulder swing, bringing the heavy forelimb crashing against the unit’s CPU, shattering the optic sensor and leaving the head hanging from the sparking neck stump by little else but a few wires. She turned to the second unit, now with its back turned, and broke into a run. Leaping onto the unit’s back, she flung the Bastion arm around its head, catching the other end in her free hand, and pulled. After only a moment, the CPU snapped off, and both tumbled backward to the ground.

                Even enveloped in the digital snow, a thin sheen of sweat had risen on Aleksandra’s skin, and she wiped it from her brow as she scrambled to her feet. The three Bastion corpses smoked around her, but the woods were strangely quiet, the legions of glowing optic slits waiting in the shadows for some command to attack. She spit into the snow, and it glowed briefly at her knee.

                “What is the hold-up?” she asked, resting her hands on her hips as she caught her breath. Her right hand felt like it was on fire.

                “Aleksandra, I’m already detecting heightened levels of lactic acid production in your system, as well as increased inflammation in your right hand,” Athena cautioned, “Did you stretch before beginning this program?”

                Aleksandra snorted.

                “Are you mocking me?” she asked the sky, too surprised by Athena’s answer to be genuinely angry – yet.

                “That was not my intention,” the AI answered. “I was attempting to establish a rapport with you by referring to your habit of reminding others to—”

                “If you want to ‘establish a rapport,’ _machine_ , then continue with the program,” Aleksandra growled. She windmilled her right arm, trying to distract herself from the still-rising pain. She knew this was a bad idea, but she was still too angry to care.

                “Very well,” Athena said after a long moment, her voice as cold and impassive as it had been all morning. “Would you like them all at once, or in an orderly line?”

                “You pick,” Aleksandra sighed, rubbing her hands together. The first stabs of cold began to prick her fingers and bare arms.

                “All at once, then,” Athena decided, and the red lights surrounding Aleksandra lurched forward as a single clanking mass. “Good luck.”

+++

                Mei’s eyes cracked open, and the white-paneled ceiling of Aleksandra’s living room greeted her. Barely audible through the six layers of blankets and sheets swaddling her, a pleasant, musical chime sounded through the apartment.

                She mumbled something even she struggled to understand, and the chimes continued.

                She mumbled it louder, and chimes played on.

                “关!” she moaned, poking her face out of the six layers and pushing her rounded chin over the topmost blanket. The chimes faded to silence.

                She pulled the covers tighter and rolled over, her cheek meeting the soft, plush carpet, and closed her eyes again.

                45 minutes later, she opened her eyes for the second time that morning. Like an inchworm, she scrunched up and wiggled until most of the blankets and sheets were out from under her, then she began kicking, freeing her legs from their comfy encasement while leaving her upper body still-wrapped. She rose slowly, and not without help; flopping up back onto the couch and using it as a brace until she could get to her knees, then to her feet. The top three layers were all Aleksandra’s, so Mei wobbled down the hall (rebounding occasionally from wall to wall) to drop them back off in her best friend’s bedroom. When her hand emerged from the comforting confines of her blankets, she found the door locked, so she shrugged off the top three layers into a pile and toddled back up the hall. On her way out of the suite, she picked her glasses off of the table and nudged it back into place from where Aleksandra had moved it the night before, keeping the glass surface safely away from when Mei would inevitably migrate from the couch to the floor.

                _Have I really slept here that often?_ she wondered, and toed the table another half inch across the carpet. _I guess so._

                She didn’t bother looking down the hallway as she crossed it; the barracks were nice and quiet, just how she liked it. The biometric scanner on her own door took three tries to open, although the first two failed because she forgot to take her hand out from under her blankets before waving it in front of the scanner, but eventually the door slid open and she shuffled forward.

                Her blankets, however, did not go with her, and they fell off her shoulders and onto the floor in a heap, leaving her standing in the middle of the hallway in nothing but a tank-shirt and a pair of boyshorts.

                “Huh, so there _is_ somebody under all those—” Junkrat began smugly, his peg-leg holding down the edge of her covers, but his sentence ended in something like a half-choked squeak as Mei rounded on him, having gone from barely-conscious to wide awake and livid in roughly half a second. Her brown hair, down across her shoulders and half-covering her face, altered her appearance from sleepy climatologist to vengeful spirit in one head turn. “Uh…g’day.”

                “What is _wrong_ with you?!” she hissed, fists clenched so hard they were shaking slightly.

                “Heh, uh, nothin’ according to Doc Z!” he stammered, chuckling nervously. Mei imagined firing icicles into that stupid smile at least 12 different ways in the span of an eye-blink, and as Junkrat recognized the look on her face of somebody entertaining an increasingly macabre murder-fantasy, he quickly dropped to his knees and began to gather up her blankets.

                “No! Stop! Don’t—” she started, but it was too late: he had already bundled up her covers into a huge ball and now held them out to her like a naughty child trying to make amends: in the process he’d gotten his filthy black fingerprints _all over_ the thick, comforting fabric. She snatched them away before he could dirty them further.

                “You’re welcome,” he grunted with a frown. Mei’s eye twitched, and the distaste for the Junker that had been simmering since the day before threatened to boil over.

                “Do not touch my blankets! Do not touch my cup! Do not touch my _anything_!” she snapped, pointing an accusatory finger half an inch from his nose, and a pale red, barely visible underneath the layer of grime, appeared on Junkrat’s face. She shook the ball of blankets at him, hit it crudely with her hands, and rubbed her face in it for good measure. She couldn’t tell if it the filthy Junker had transferred his inescapable gasoline smell to the blankets just by touching them, or if he really did smell even worse than yesterday. “Mine! They’re mine, not yours!”

                When she pulled her face out of the blankets, there was a small black smudge on her nose, and Junkrat tried to keep from giggling so hard he nearly choked.

                “What? What’s so funny?” she asked, her face getting redder by the syllable.

                Unable to answer, Junkrat extended a finger to wipe the smudge off (the fact that the grime originally came from his own hands completely lost on him) until Mei raised her hand to bat his own away. He quickly withdrew, but still couldn’t get a single word out. Catching his intention, she wiped her own nose, but only succeeded in spreading the smudge over her entire nose instead of just the tip. Junkrat finally doubled over in laughter, a wheezing cackle that ground against Mei’s last good nerve like sandpaper, and she began to consider smothering him with her now-dirty blankets, no matter how cute that crooked-toothed smile was up-close.

                Before she could go through with her murderous plan, a massive, black-nailed hand extended from a nearby apartment door, closed around Junkrat’s neck, and yanked him inside, tossing him down the front hallway with as much effort as one might put behind throwing a stuffed animal. The owner of the hand, Roadhog, emerged from the suite door and shook his head.

                “He’s an idiot,” the titan Junker grunted, and his booming, sepulchral voice shook Mei from her head to her feet. He was still in his pants, socks, and mask, but there were dark tanlines where his equipment should’ve been; the lack of armor did surprisingly little to make him seem less terrifying.

                “I’ve noticed,” she replied, trying to sound not-at-all intimidated. She leaned across the hall, trying to ignore the somehow-even-stronger stench of the taller Junker, and peered down the suite hallway to where Junkrat lay in a crumpled-up pile at the end, pouting back at the doorway, his dirty white robe undone revealing white pajama bottoms – tangled in his peg-leg, of course – below his distractingly well-sculpted bare chest. “Is he going to be alright?” she asked, her tone considerably softer.

                “He’s fine.”

                “No, I’m not!” he shouted back, and made two obscene gestures with both of his perfectly-functioning arms. “You’ve broken all me bits!”

                Roadhog chuckled once, turned back to Mei, and pointed to his still-masked face.

                “You’ve got, uh—” He tapped the ‘nose’ of his pig-like gas mask.

                “A nose? I know,” she snapped, and leaned over again. “Sometimes I think I’m the _only_ one!” she shouted down the hall, and Junkrat blew a raspberry in response. “Take a shower!” She turned back to Roadhog, who seemed to tower even taller over her at this proximity. “You too,” she quickly muttered before practically vanishing into her own suite, scooping up the dirty blankets before Roadhog could retort.

                “She’s right, you know,” Ana Amari added as she walked past the perplexed Junker in the hallway, a cup of tea in one hand and a book with Arabic script on cover in the other, her long white braid swishing from side to side across her blue-robed back as she moved. She walked in bare feet, but made no sound as she crossed the tile floor, moving like a ghost. Halfway down the hall, she turned back. “Don’t make an old woman pull rank, hm?”

+++

                Aleksandra tore the digitally-projected Bastion fist out of her chest and threw it on the ground, kicking it across the snow with a yell. She sank to her knees amid the evaporating Bastion corpses and punched the snow, scattering the hard-light particles into glittering nothingness.

                “How many?” she gasped; the burning in her lungs was almost nothing compared to the agony in her right hand, which felt as if she’d dipped it in molten metal. Sweat dripped off of her nose and onto the snow, sizzling against the light projection.

                “14,” Athena stated. “Given your current rate of exertion, it is unlikely you will reach your record today, let alone break it.”

                “Unacceptable!” she spat before scooping the projected snow in her hands and tossed it in her face; it may have been fake, but it was also frigid, and it centered her in the training room instead of the battle she would have rather been fighting at that moment. “Run it agai—wait, set the woods on fire!”

                “…Excuse me?” Athena asked, and it was the most human she had ever sounded to Aleksandra.

                “I need more! More motivation, more…” she trailed off as she stood up, unsure of how to finish the sentence.

                “Drama?” the AI suggested. Aleksandra glared at the sky.

                Before she could spit a retort, the forest burst into flames; chunks of burning wood fell to her feet as the trees went up, and the deep blue sky turned bright orange. Aleksandra closed her eyes, felt the heat on her back, and exhaled, her breath turning to fog even in the midst of the blaze. She imagined the smell of smoking machines and overheated particle weapons, the sound of marching feet and horrendously filthy bass drops.

                _Wait, horrendously filthy bass drops?_

                Aleksandra’s eyes shot open as a wave of distorted, industrial-level bass crunch washed over her, rattling her teeth and ribcage as it gave way to a spider-web of spindling tenor synth.

                “This is hardly realistic,” she shouted up at Athena, trying to disguise the fact that although she didn’t recognize the song, she _really_ liked it already.

                “This entire scenario is hardly realistic,” the AI replied. “Bastion units are built for ranged combat; they rarely engage hand-to-hand unless given no other option. You listen to music while engaged in most other forms of exercise – this is no different.”

                A woman’s voice, haughty, confident, and stylistically glitched-out, sang over the stomping bassline:

                _“I…I’m watching every move you make, look out, I’m gonna knock you down!_

_I…I know you wanna survive, but I, but I ain’t gonna let you ‘cause—”_

                “Again?” Athena asked, barely audible above the techno-pop din and the roaring – though artificial – flames.

                Aleksandra clenched away a smirk, and nodded. The red lights came again.

                _“This life is right in front of me! You think you can beat me, but now you’ll see_

_I don’t really want to let you live, baby! Come around, I’ll knock you down!_

_Touch me and I’ll break your face!”_

+++

                Roadhog pulled Junkrat to his feet; the smaller Junker pushed the giant hand away (with some considerable effort) and brushed himself off overdramatically.

                “Shower, now,” Roadhog rumbled.

                “I don’t need a bloody shower! I’m fine! Stuck-up—”

                “NOW.”

                “FINE!” Junkrat started down the back hallway towards the bathroom when Roadhog caught him, picked him up, and placed him back down facing the front door.

                “ _Your_ shower.” Roadhog crossed his arms, signaling the end of any possible debate.

                “You’re absolutely no fun at all, mate,” Junkrat sighed.

                “Get.” Junkrat stalked towards the exit, and the suite door opened as he approached. “Wash your pants and socks, too.”

                “I ain’t washin’ _shit_ , you conch!” he whined back. Roadhog took a step in his direction, and the younger Junker yelped and dashed into his own room. The door sealed behind him, and he was left in uncomfortable silence, crossing his arms in the front hall like a moody teenager. Cautiously, he smelled his own armpit, but the wave of violent stench he’d been expecting never came, and he smelled nothing out of the ordinary. “I don’t stink!” he shouted at the opposite wall, as if Roadhog could hear him next door, and fluffed his collar out for good measure. He looked down at the brilliant white robe, and realized it wasn’t so brilliant white anymore: it was covered in dark black handprints and filthy smudges, with the most recent set on the collar. _Eh, maybe he’s got a point_ , Junkrat grudgingly thought, then added _Maybe she’s got a point, too_ when he remembered Mei yelling at him in the hallway. Truth be told he was kind of hazy from the back-wall impact and couldn’t make out much at the time, but he’d gotten the general gist.

                Junkrat hobbled into the bathroom and took a look around; black tile and silver trimmings, with a wall-mounted toilet, standing shower behind a sliding glass door, towel-rack, and a circular sink with a tall mirror. The lone outlier was a long, receded shelf built into the far wall, lit by an internal light and dotted with tiny holes along the bottom and sides. Ignoring the odd shelf for the moment, Junkrat checked himself out in the mirror.

                In spite of Junkrat’s apathy towards what most people might consider the bare minimum of grooming standards (and, indeed, most standards of decency not even pertaining to appearances), even he had to admit he looked a bit rough around the edges. Or, as he put it:

                “Bloody hell, I look like a brick shithouse.”

                Junkrat quickly disrobed; having nowhere else to put his things, he stuffed them into a dirty pile on the receded shelf. He twisted his prosthetics in a left-right combination only he and Roadhog knew, deactivating the heartbeat sensors within, and laid them on the toilet seat. The stumps of his arm and leg felt cold without the prosthetics attached, and he rubbed the smooth skin to heat it up; he was far from the only Junker who had lost a limb, but he _was_ the only one who didn’t have scar tissue to mark the absence, although until Dr. Ziergler’s exclamation the day before, he hadn’t ever thought much of it.

               Finally, he turned his attention to the shower controls; instead of a switch or a handle, there was an interactive screen built into the wall. It was like no shower he’d ever seen before, although to be fair, he’d never spent a great deal of his life in the shower anyway.

                “Please make sure your clothes are completely inside the wash chamber,” a soothing, synthetic voice asked over the bathroom intercom. Junkrat, who was far from soothed at the sound of any synthetic voice, let alone a disembodied one, quickly snatched up his peg-leg and brandished it like a baseball bat.

                “What’s that?! Who’s there!? Show yourself!” he ordered, hopping around on one foot, trying not to leave any angle of potential attack undefended.

                “My name is Athena. I’m Overwatch’s computer system,” the voice explained. Junkrat only lowered his prosthetic leg an inch.

                “Computer system, eh? You an Omnic? I _hate_ Omnics.”

                “Not exactly,” Athena answered. “I’m an artificial intelligence, but I have no form, no body, and, most importantly, no external army of machines with which to enforce my will should I go irrevocably rampant.”

                “What’re you doin’ in me lav?”

                “I’m in everyone’s ‘lav.’ I’m in every room in this facility.”

                Junkrat dropped his prosthetic leg and covered himself with his hand and arms as best he could.

                “Bit nosy, you think?”

                “I collated and relayed your biometric scan data from Dr. Ziegler to the training program. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

                Junkrat turned slightly red, but also relaxed slightly. Athena was pleased to the extent of her programming; this new recruit was much more receptive to humor than his companion was currently being.

                “Now, if you will, please make sure all your clothes are completely inside the wash chamber.”

                The light within the recessed shelf glowed brighter for a moment, emphasizing her request. Junkrat hopped over, carefully pushed the flap of his discarded shorts onto the shelf, and recoiled, as if expecting some immediate, dramatic reaction.

                “Wash basin, huh? How’s that work?”

                “I’ll show you.”

                A plexi-glass barrier extended up from the bottom of the shelf, closing off the recess completely. Water filled the sealed chamber, pouring from the myriad holes, and soon Junkrat was watching his shorts, socks, shoes, and wrappings float in a bright blue tank. He pressed his face to the plexi-glass, eyes wide with wonder.

                “It’s like an aquarium for clothes!”

                “I suppose so,” Athena agreed. Streams of soap squirted into the clear water, and soon the entire chamber was a white, soapy cloud as the interior jets began to scrub his garments clean. However, all Junkrat could make out were bubbles. “Your garments will be finished momentarily, but I believe it’s your turn now.”

                Junkrat shrugged and hobbled over into the shower, slid the glass door close behind him, and stood in front of the showerhead expectantly.

                “Well?” he asked.

                “I’m afraid you have to operate the shower yourself; my functionalities concerning physical interaction with organic persons are understandably limited.”

                “Heh, so you can wash my shorts but not my hair?” Junkrat asked as he cautiously activated the shower panel with a filthy finger. The interface seemed simple enough: just a glowing LCD version of an ordinary shower handle. But then there were showerhead spray patterns, precise temperature settings, even aromatherapy scents…

                “That’s correct. I perform all automated duties, as well as monitor the physical and mental wellbeing of on-site Overwatch agents. Other than that, I’m hands-off. So to speak. Although I _can_ do this:”

                A silver, ventilated bench extended from the back wall of the shower, and Junkrat cautiously sat down on it, resting his one good leg. Once he got over how cold the metal was, the Junker’s face broke into a wide grin.

                “Bet they ain’t got these at the Mantra!”

                He reached forward, scrolled through a number of presets, and selected the one marked ‘Classic.’

                A massaging stream of warm water emerged from the showerhead and splashed across Junkrat’s sputtering face; after a few coughs and a quick rinse, he actually started enjoying himself, humming “Down Under” under his breath and scrubbing the thick layers of grime off with his black fingernails. He was having such a good time, in fact, that when a small aperture opened in the wall, producing bottles of shampoo and conditioner, he didn’t hesitate to use them.

                At least until small clumps of toasted blond hair ended up in his hands while he was lathering.

                “Junkrat, you appear to be experiencing—”

                “It’s, uh, it’s nothin’,” he insisted, quickly washing the hair from his hands. “It’ll be back in a day or two anyways.”

                In spite of his eagerness to return to washing, the rest of the shower was quiet and short; by the time Morrison’s voice came over the intercom, he was already dressed and thoroughly enjoying the feeling of warm, clean clothing he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

+++

                A howling blast of freezing air and crunching metal almost bowled Winston over as the training room door opened onto a scene of carnage unlike anything he’d seen since the Omnic Crisis: as the surrounding woods blazed with raging fires, countless destroyed Bastion units lay buried in the snow, some mostly intact but twitching inactively, others barely recognizable as anything but spare parts. He thought he heard the throbbing of drum and bass floating on the frigid night wind, but an electric tearing snapped his eyes to the middle of the destruction, to the destructor herself.

                Drenched in sweat, shoulders heaving, and holding both the still-smoking body and head of a Bastion unit in either hand, was Aleksandra Zaryanova. She dropped the shattered Omnic remnants to the ground and turned to the source of sterile white light shining onto the battlefield, and when Winston saw the frigid fire in her eyes, a small part of him worried he might be next.

                “What?” she asked, her Olympian physique still taut for combat as a bow string.

                “Jack wants everyone down at the command center; didn’t you hear?” The simian scientist pointed up.

                “No.” The truth was she _might_ have heard some sort of announcement, but between the loud music and the unending thoughts of Omnic destruction taking up most of her thoughts, she also _might_ have ignored it. _Not that he needs to know_ , she thought.

                “Well, I’m heading down, and you should too.”

                Aleksandra grunted, and the battlefield disappeared, leaving her alone in the middle of the large, cube-shaped training room. A towel rack extended from the wall as walked out the door, and she grabbed all three, drying herself off as she followed Winston out of the facility. Just outside the door, she paused.

                “How many was that?” she asked.

                “24,” Athena replied, not without a note of warmth. “Consider me impressed.”

                “I did not do it to impress you,” the Russian woman spat. “Tomorrow I go for 30.”

                Athena gave no answer, and Aleksandra walked out into canyons bathed in the golden light of morning.

                “So, you’ve got family back in Russia?” Winston asked, slowing down his pace so she could catch up.

                “No,” she replied softly, running the white fabric over her short pink hair. Without the imitation-Russian winter, the ache in her muscles was really starting to make itself know. Maybe she’d try for 30 on the _after_ tomorrow.

                “Any, uh, gym buddies? Friends?”

                “A few,” she said, voice muffled by the towel across her face. “Why?”

                Winston took a deep breath.

                “A few of the transmissions you’ve sent out have set off Athena’s encryption protocols,” he began. Although her face was hidden, Aleksandra’s entire body tensed – as much as it could, given the level of fatigue she was experiencing, anyway. The mandatory espionage training – at the Kremlin’s request, of course – she had undergone she had also passed easily, but this was the real world, and something like mild panic began to rise in her mind. “We appreciate the gesture, but the Watchpoint has encryption protocols that outstrip pretty much everything else on the market right now.”

                She brought the towel down low enough to see over it, keeping the rest of her face masked.

                “Is that right? Even after all this time?”

                “That’s correct, yes,” Winston confirmed. “In fact, using extra encryption could potentially act as a, uh, a backdoor for someone else to get in. There’s not really any way to know who else might be watching your conversation.”

                They reached the entrance to the command center, but both stopped walking before they stepped through the door. Winston put a hair paw on Aleksandra’s shoulder.

                “I know we’ve all got mostly different reasons for being here,” he said, “but I’m trusting that the primary one, to, you know, save the world from another global conflict, is still the same.”

                He gave her a sad, sort of half-smile, and Aleksandra’s heart sank into her stomach, the burn in her muscles nothing next to the heat of shame in her face.

                “O-of course,” she said. Winston nodded.

                “Then that’s all I needed to hear.”

+++

                Jack Morrison barely stifled a sigh as he looked over the assembled operatives, though he hesitated to use that term with a few of them. There were enough of the old guard left to anchor things, sure, but there were too many wildcards in the deck for his liking, not with the news he’d just heard. Ana filling Winston in, Aleksandra sulking over something with Mei, Roadhog and Junkrat comparing whose freshly-cleaned spikes were shiniest, and Genji, Lena, Angela, and Reinhardt over to the side, reminiscing about old times. Old times were about to feel real new again. He cleared his throat.

                “Good morning,” he said, sounding like he could _not_ have meant it less. “As you all know, yesterday’s operation in Houston was a success.” Tracer, Winston, and Ana nodded to the applause, but Morrison continued without waiting for it to die down. “Authorities in the city are on a high alert, and even if Talon was stubborn enough to try a heist like that twice, they wouldn’t get far. But in two weeks, the Doomfist gauntlet is _leaving_ the Overwatch Museum and is heading to Numbani Heritage Museum. I don’t need international security reports to guarantee you that Talon’s already preordered exhibit tickets.”

                Now the room was deathly quiet.

                “Some of you have fought alongside one another. Others of you have fought in armies, but not as a part of a small strike force. Some of you haven’t seen combat at all. Others have seen a _lot_ of combat but never had to worry about collateral damage.” Every ear was trained to the Strike Commander’s words, and Winston couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. To those who had known him in the past, the years seemed to crumble away from Jack Morrison until he was that golden-haired hero again, the soldier who spoke as eloquently as he fought. “Either way, we’re all here now, even if we’re not exactly a team yet. The gauntlet is in Houston for two weeks, so by my reckoning that means we have two weeks to become one. No more solo training sessions, no more staggered visits to the dining hall, no more sleeping in until 10 in the morning.”

                Lena suppressed a frown at that last part.

                “Whatever happens now, we do it together. We train together. We eat together. We sleep together—”

                Junkrat burst into giggles and Roadhog slapped him on the back of the head. Morrison ignored them. He was on a roll, and he knew it.

                “—We fight together. We stay alive together. We _die_ together if that’s what it comes to. Does that sound like a plan?”

                The room erupted in cheers, and even Roadhog nodded silently in agreement. Standing in a crowd of warriors, getting fired up for a battle to come – it reminded him of the days in the Outback, even if he wasn’t the one doing the speaking this time.

                “Damn right it does!” Morrison shouted back, his features shaped into a commanding grin. “Now get to the VR room! Talon’s going to be ready for that gauntlet, but _we’re_ going to be ready for _them_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Sully, remember when I said the previous chapter concluded the 'Day One' arc of the story? I lied! But seriously, after this there'll be a bit of a skip (I PROMISE). My intention for this chapter was as sort of a post-mortem for the previous stuff, and to set up what's coming next both for the pairings and Overwatch as a whole. I also wanted to give the characters some room to be themselves, particularly Junkrat and Zarya.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I'll see you on the next one!


	6. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roadhog and Junkrat are great with each other, but not so good with everyone else. Or each other, for that matter. Also, ZARYA VS. ROADHOG FIGHT HERE WE FRIGGIN' GO.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). Make sure to check the bottom notes for a change in the first chapter.
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                Roadhog bellowed in frustration as his scrap gun clicked empty just as its iron sights fell on a bewildered Talon operative taking cover behind a car with shattered windows.

                “Hook n’ cook!” Junkrat called, and the hefty Junker’s butcher-hook flew forward without missing a beat, latching onto the operative’s black-pouched belt. Roadhog pulled back hard, yanking the mercenary from his feet with a high-pitched yelp, but the poor bastard never had a chance to endure whatever grisly fate the gas-masked killer had in mind: a barrage of flying red grenades intercepted his flailing body mid-air. The ensuing detonation mingled with Junkrat’s mad laughter, and echoed through the warzone that downtown Numbani had become, barely audible above the din of gunfire and explosions. The operative’s body dissipated into empty pixels, and Roadhog’s hook snapped back into his waiting hand.

                “Still ain’t learned how to count your shots, mate,” Junkrat ribbed as he hopped atop the now-completely destroyed car, its sophisticated construction obliterated by the bomb shockwave.

                “Still ain’t learned how to keep your mouth shut,” Roadhog growled back, but the two burst into chuckles a moment later. The fire, the destruction, the chaos: even in simulation, this was their element, and after almost two weeks of practice, it was beginning to feel like home again. This was no heist job, no half-hour chopper chase. Every morning they got to get up and blow the hell out of everything until it was time for bed. It was almost as fun as the old days, the war days in the Outback.

                Junkrat howled to the blackened-blue sky, and Roadhog joined him with a guttural roar.

                Aleksandra Zaryanova rolled her eyes at the savage Junkers behaving like a couple of wild children in need of some strict disciplining. Since they’d arrived, she’d been forced to admit to herself there was more to those two idiots than just machismo and gasoline stench: they were a brutally effective pair, bulldozing through anything stupid enough to stand in their way, and cackling like madmen the whole time. Still, they lacked total unit cohesion, and when faced with an opponent they had to out-think, she saw them falter. Skilled killers, that was all they were. Very skilled killers.

                She nodded over her shoulder, and Mei-Ling Zhou, who had taken cover behind the much-taller woman in much more armor, nodded back with a grin that might’ve bordered on malevolent. Whether it was the belligerent arrival of Overwatch’s newest members or just finally getting some real time in combat simulations, Aleksandra had watched a fiercely competitive side emerge from her friend in the past days, and it made the Russian’s heart swell with pride to fight along someone as hungry to prove herself. Just a few minutes ago, a trace bullet burst had shredded Mei’s sleeve, leaving bright red grazes across the pale skin beneath, and the climatologist hadn’t even blinked, instead launching a salvo of lethal icicles into the face of the Talon mercenary who had fired on her. Of course it was more likely Mei was running on so much adrenaline that she simply hadn’t noticed the wound, but still, there was something to be said for guts and gumption when the focus of combat training hadn’t quite been attained.

                The two women took off down the street, staying low behind the lines of bullet hole-ridden cars, to join up with the spearhead stabbing through the Talon lines: Jack Morrison and Angela Ziegler.

                The black-armored operatives either fell back or died as blue-white streams of pulse-fire lanced through them; no cover provided enough safety, no serpentine retreat provided enough obfuscation to escape from the Strike Commander’s rapid, methodical advance from car to car, ducking just as the enemy began to fire back, and popping out right as the onslaught abated. Ziegler had hardly needed to perform any healing at all, and instead her Caduceus staff was connected to Morrison by a bright blue beam, enhancing the velocity and kinetic impact of his heavy pulse rifle, turning the already-lethal weapon even more deadly. She stayed concealed behind the Strike Commander, watching the corners and balconies for flanking Talon mercenaries, and where she called out their positions, the heavy pulse rifle swung like an automated sentry gun and cut them down with a precision that was almost Omnic-like in both its impassivity and extreme prejudice.

                Aleksandra took advantage of the cleared combat zone and dove behind one of the few still-hovering vehicles along the street. Mei tucked in tight behind her, rolling less than gracefully against the bumper with a pronounced wince.

                “Status report!” Morrison barked across the asphalt.

                “Ready for the push!” Aleksandra shouted back.

                A beam of golden, biotic light snaked across the street and enveloped Mei; the red tears across her arm shrunk, then vanished, leaving her skin without even a bruise.

                “ _Now_ you are,” Angela stated with a matter-of-fact nod, and Mei beamed back. Although there was something about the doctor that had never quite agreed with Aleksandra – perhaps it was the indefatigable politeness, or the detached, clinical way she seemed to look at others when she thought no one was looking at _her_ – but her dedication to the healing arts was unquestionable. She dove, juked, and soared through hails of gunfire for the rest of them, the wings of her angelic Valkyrie suit leaving heavenly contrails through hundreds of impotent tracer rounds. The burly soldier also couldn’t help wondering how many lives could be saved if the same borderline-magical technology concealed within her Caduceus staff were made available across the world – or at least in Russia.

                No sooner had the gold beam receded back into its emitter at the end of Ziegler’s staff, then one of the nearby balconies exploded with gunfire, raining bullets down at Mei and Aleksandra. Aleksandra pushed herself down against the car until her face hurt, and just below the withering fusillade, she thought she heard the climatologist whimpering at her back. The adrenaline, it seemed, had run out for the time being.

                Morrison rose up to counterattack, but several streams of bullets swiveled in his direction, sending him back down to the cover of the rapidly-deteriorating truck. He put his finger to his ear and yelled.

                “Junkers! Where the hell are you?!”

                There was only static over the comms.

                Morrison turned back across the street.

                “Mei! I give me a wall over that balcony!”

                A particularly close burst ripped the side of the car to shreds, blowing out its brake light. The climatologist squealed and pushed herself closer to Aleksandra, as if she could disappear into the Russian woman’s armor.

                “Wall! Now!” Now Morrison was yelling over both the comms and the vicious weapon fire.

                “Go!” Aleksandra said, and nudged Mei with her elbow – harder than she intended. “I’ll shield you!”

                Cursing in Mandarin with a shaky voice, Mei scrambled to her feet and switched the firing mode on her endothermic blaster. Targeting the terrified climatologist, Aleksandra activated her particle cannon’s barrier projector. The pink barrier closed around Mei just as she rose and fired, the Talon bullets harmlessly evaporating as they impacted the cannon’s projected shield. The air around the balcony seemed to slow for a split second, and then a wall of solid ice sprung up, ceiling off the mercenaries in what, until a split-second earlier, they would have thought of as their vantage point.

                The wall was barely up when Aleksandra and the Strike Commander began to move, leveling their weapons at it.

                “When I give the word,” Morrison ordered, “drop the wall!”

                “What?!” Mei squeaked. The Strike Commander began to say something, but Aleksandra interrupted him.

                “We’ve got this. Trust us.”

                Mei swallowed hard and nodded. The two soldiers both braced.

                “Now!”

                Mei pressed a button on her endothermic blaster, and the tiny coolant-emitters that had created the wall initially began to vibrate rapidly, shattering the wall into worthless chunks in the blink of an eye. Before the wall had even begun to crumble, Morrison and Zaryanova fired, sending a cluster of Helix rockets and an orb-shaped particle charge flying into the balcony; the shards of ice dropped just in time for the projectiles to pass, and everything – and everyone – inside was obliterated in a digitized explosion that sent discarded weapons and chunks of black armor scattering to the street.

                “Good work,” Morrison stated, although the clipped tone sounded more like a reprimand than a congratulations. “Where are the other two?”

                “No idea,” Aleksandra spat, although what she really wanted to say was “Who cares?”

                Morrison kicked out the remaining brake light on the car Aleksandra and Mei had been hiding behind, causing the two women to jump back an inch. At the beginning of training, on lower difficulties, their tendency to wander off and do their own thing had been negligible, but lately the two-man act had become a serious liability. Even Dr. Ziegler’s ordinarily calm façade sunk into an expression of barely-concealed disappointment.

                “They’ll catch up,” the Strike Commander growled to no one in particular. “We’re moving.”

                The next few tense minutes were ominously uneventful as the four operatives darted between abandoned cars and empty buildings, checking every corner for waiting assassins and matte-black mercenaries eager to earn their pay, but finding not a single assailant. Aside from the hurried creeping of combat boots and the soft rustle of fabric, the streets were silent.

                “Maybe we scared them off?” Mei suggested hopefully.

                The other three paused, turned, and looked at her like a lost child.

                “…or maybe not,” she added, looking down at her boots.

                “Mercs don’t scare easy,” the Strike Commander sighed, rounding a corner up the narrow alley ahead. “Not in broad daylight, anyway. You _really_ want to send’em screaming, you’ve got to hit them right when they least exp—”

                Aleksandra’s hand instinctively shot out, latched onto Morrison’s leather jacket, and yanked him back just as a raging volley from a dozen assault rifles roared down the alley. Errant bullets nicked the Strike Commander’s boots, leaving smoking graze marks across the black soles as he fell back onto the muscular Russian.

                “Nice timing,” he coughed.

                “I was about to say the same thing,” Aleksandra said with a smirk. “Did you plan that?”

                “Not that time.” He got to his feet, slower than he would’ve liked, and approached the corner again. Another blast of automatic fire rained across the inclined street before he could even get close. “They’re stuck in like an Alabama tick; we’ll have to find another way around.”

                “If we could find those two filthy maniacs, we could—”

                A tall window on the other side of the lane shattered as the Junkers crashed through it, hurtling down onto the sidewalk. They were on their feet in a moment, covered in black powder, broken glass, and blood – and grinning like idiots, although only Junkrat’s smile was visible.

                “Does that happen as often in real life, or is it just a simulation thing?” Mei whispered.

                The Strike Commander shrugged.

                “Are you in need of medical attention?” Dr. Ziegler called across the road.

                “Nah, none a’ this is _our_ blood,” Junkrat replied, brushing some glass shards from his shoulder. “We headin’ up the way or what?”

                “They’re too entrenched; we’ll have to flank.”

                “They’re right there, let’s rush’em!” Roadhog growled, shoving bits of broken glass into his scrap gun. Aleskandra rolled her eyes.

                “We will be torn to pieces even _with_ my shield!”

                “Maybe _you_ will,” the titanic Junker spat back, and her pursed lips twisted into a snarl.

                Morrison sighed; when he’d first met the pair, he’d assumed Junkrat was the leader, but when the bullets started flying, it became clear who was _really_ calling the shots. Out of combat, Roadhog was surprisingly reasonable, if withdrawn, but _in_ combat, drunk on adrenaline and the rush of destruction, he was almost unmanageable. On a two-man team, that probably worked. On a six-man team, it most certainly did not. The Strike Commander looked over his shoulder.

                “Angela, go with them,” he ordered. “We’ll flank around the side and catch them in the middle.”

                “Of course,” she replied, a little too eagerly for the Strike Commander’s taste. She shot across the street, expertly gliding on golden wings through the hail of bullets, and took up a position between the Junkers. Junkrat watched her with wide-eyed wonder, and whistled as she floated to the ground.

                “Hoo-ey, think you could make _me_ a pair a’ th—”

                “No,” she stated with a warm smile, ending all discussion of the subject forever with a single word. Junkrat blushed lightly, and Mei found her eyes narrowing in the Swiss doctor’s direction before she even realized what she was doing.

                “We’re moving out,” Morrison barked. “You three move up on my mark.”

                As soon as the others had moved out of sight, Junkrat turned to Roadhog and wiggled his eyebrows.

                “Right,” Roadhog chuckled. “Get behind me, doc!” Then he barreled out into oncoming gunfire, Junkrat right behind.

                She dashed in alongside him – there was more than enough room in the towering Junker’s shadow – and tried to suppress a smile; she’d wanted to see Roadhog’s combat capabilities for herself since that first examination in the med-bay, and now she had a front row seat.

                He did not disappoint.

                Roaring like some feral beast, he fired off volley after volley of metal and glass, shredding everything in front of him with each blast of lethal junk. Broken shards sliced through ballistic fabrics, and discarded screws, nuts, and bolts fractured useless ballistic armor, driving the Talon mercenaries back further with each successive blast. The recently-polished hook shot out, wrapping around another unlucky killer almost as soon as it returned to Roadhog’s hand, dragging them to a brutal, short end. Junkrat was nothing but a mad cackle and a perpetual rain of explosives flying from over the titanic Junker’s shoulders. This was the Roadhog Show, his own personal, perpetual apocalypse, but Angela was too busy watching him to notice the havoc he was wreaking.

                Bullets streaked across his skin, leaving tiny red marks that disappeared seconds later, grazes that should have left bloody tears having comparable effects to mosquito bites. On his muscular arms and upper chest, the projectiles sunk into his skin but stopped before they could penetrate further, the dense, superhuman fat and muscle beneath preventing any penetration but a direct hit. Across his wobbling belly, any rounds that didn’t get stuck in the fat simply bounced off. A few errant bullets dinged off of his shoulderpads, but the evident truth was that he hardly needed the armor at all: he could’ve gone naked into battle without any quantifiable decrease in protection. Small arms fire was an _annoyance_.

                “Mein Gott,” she whispered to herself.

                A particularly well-aimed burst of fire raked across Roadhog’s left shoulder, and he roared in pain, jarring Dr. Ziegler out of her observational haze. Golden light snaked from the Caduceus staff and enveloped him, further fortifying his inhuman physique. Bullets clinked to the ground, expelled from wounds coaxed shut by the biotic beam, and Roadhog’s bellow turned triumphant, breaking into a deep, ominous laugh that would’ve unsettled Angela more if she hadn’t been the one drawing it out of him. The Junker broke into a loping charge, and she was on his heels in an instant, nearly knocking Junkrat out of the way. She briefly wondered if the shorter Junker was gifted with the same resilience, and resolved to run more simulations once the session was over.

                Morrison, Aleksandra, and Mei reached the balcony overlooking the courtyard just as the other three had almost made it into the courtyard itself. The Strike Commander cursed under his breath; he’d told those two to wait so the balcony team could pick out targets. Now it was a free for all.

                “At least they’re distracted,” Mei said with a shrug.

                Aleksandra was too busy watching Roadhog’s terrible advance to comment.

                The gigantic Junker was insane, that much she knew. Laughing with inhuman malice, he stomped through automatic gunfire without so much as a care, firing his scrapgun wildly, and dealing death with every hook. He killed not just with ease, but with eagerness. She had known men like him, the scavengers who followed the Omnic advance, preying on the survivors, taking whatever they wished. Some of them had just been pragmatic, doing what they thought was necessary for their own survival, no matter the cost, but there were others, others who killed with the same ease as the machines, but without the built-in lack of morality to excuse their brutality as simply a product of their assembly-line existence. Men who were not men, but monsters and by choice.

                Roadhog was like them – she heard it in every fresh chuckle elicited by every fresh kill, and saw it in his aim as he blasted the mercs to ribbons limb by limb – and disgust and hate welled up in Aleksandra’s throat like a battle cry. Worse yet, a third feeling, one she would not put a name on, one that hid behind the wave of odium that slowly consumed her every time she looked at him. Desire? Envy? Whatever it was, she swallowed it, shoved it back into the recesses of her mind, and let the emptiness it left in its absence burn off at the edges of her focus like drops of water in a hot pan. Prolonged introspection was a bad enough habit, but such thoughts on the battlefield came with a price she was unwilling to pay a second time. She rubbed the scar along her temple with the palm of her hand, and the gunfire around her snapped back into clarity.

                “Damnit! So much for a coordinated pincer,” the Strike Commander cursed. “Grab cover and open fire!”

                The Talon mercenaries were so distracted by the oncoming wall of death moving inexorably up the street that they barely noticed the storm of pulse fire, particle charges, and icicles raining down on them until almost a quarter of their remaining numbers had fallen. Once they _had_ noticed, the Talon line broke into chaos. Roadhog and Junkrat’s haphazard blasts drove them out into the balcony team’s crosshairs, and anyone who paused to fire up was quickly cut down by a mixture of explosives and screaming-fast scrap. The mercenaries were completely overrun.

                Or they would’ve been, if not for the towering, matte-black mech that dropped from the sky and into the courtyard with a ground-shaking crunch. Three more Talon mercenaries met their end beneath the allied assault walker’s concrete-cracking claws, but the trade-off in firepower was negligible: the mech, a bulky, two-story tall imitation of a South Korean MEKA drone, bristled with mounted machineguns, explosive launchers, a triple-barreled chaingun that swiveled back and forth atop its bulky chassis like a head, searching this way and that for potential targets.

                “Get down!”

                Aleksandra, Mei, and Morrison threw themselves to the balcony floor as the triple-barreled chaingun spun up, blasting a stream of bullets back and forth where their heads had been barely a second before. The oversized fusion cannons mounted on either of its arms targeted the ground team and began to spit fire with a deafening _chunkita-chunkita-chunkita_. Completely exposed, Roadhog swept the other two off their feet and dashed forward, taking the blasts across his shoulders as he moved between the mech’s legs and dove through a doorway on the other side of the courtyard. He crashed to the ground inside with a labored grunt, leaving dark red streaks on the tiled floor.

                “Hog! Say somethin’, mate!” Junkrat pleaded, quickly scrambling out from under the groaning Junker.

                “Ow.”

                Angela aimed her Caduceus staff, but her finger hesitated on the switch, her blue eyes fixed on Roadhog’s torn shoulders. The sliver-thin fusion pellets had utterly shredded through the Junker’s flesh, ripping through skin, muscle, and bone with clean penetrations, but even as he lay face-down on the floor, the tissue was – slowly but persistently – beginning to knit itself back together in spite of the trauma. Even the bones had realigned themselves, and were now regenerating, rejoining with one another, growing back out of apparently nothing.

                Roadhog groaned, and Dr. Ziegler flicked the button on his staff, accelerating the process and soothing his pain simultaneously. Within seconds, his skin was pristine, not even a scar left behind. Junkrat gave a low, impressed whistle.

                “Forget the wings, I think that magic stick a’ yours works better than his—”

                Roadhog growled as he stumbled to his feet, grabbing his weapons from the floor and turning back to the Talon mech, the injury having evidently only feeding his battle rage further. The Talon mech ignored them, instead focusing much of its withering fire on the balcony. Mei had erected an ice barrier to protect the team, but it was rapidly cracking under the assault.

                Junkrat hobbled to Roadhog’s side, and slapped a fresh box of explosives into his grenade launcher.

                “Take out the optics, take out the legs,” he began, worried features breaking into an unhinged grin.

                “Crack it open like an egg,” Roadhog finished, and slashed the ground with his hook, conjuring up a wave of sparks from the concrete. “You go high. Doc, keep me up!”

                The two Junkers ran out the door, and Angela, against every survival instinct she possessed, followed.

                Roadhog began the assault, running to close range and opening fire on the mech’s digitigrade joints, blasting chunks of scrap into the backs of the legs unprotected by ballistic armor. The Talon mech immediately ceased its fusillade and turned to annihilate the towering Junker, but Roadhog dashed through its legs, always staying under and slightly behind the chassis in its one ballistic blind-spot. The doctor was at his side in a moment, her healing beam now switched to an enhancing blue, adding extra kinetic force to each piece of junk flying out of her charge’s scrap gun. The metal of the mech’s legs groaned in protest, and, unable to hit Roadhog with its numerous weapons, it resorted to the one thing it _could_ hit him with: its feet.

                As the Talon mech began to stomp around like an angry, high-tech chicken, the ice barrier finally came down. Aleksandra’s blue armor was scratched grey by nearly-fatal bullets, Morrison’s mask was cracked, and Mei’s jacket had been so thoroughly ground up that every move she made released a fresh puff of down feathers and torn insulation into the air, but they were alive. Shaking and bracing themselves on what was left of the balcony railing, the three looked down at Roadhog and Dr. Ziegler as they deftly maneuvered around the crashing metal feet. Mei’s eyes widened to saucers, and the Strike Commander couldn’t hold back a grudging smile; sure, it was crazy, but it was also working. Aleksandra just shook her head.

                “They are going to get themselves killed,” she growled.

                Roadhog spun away from another crushing blow with ten times more grace than someone his size should’ve possessed. He slapped a handful of scrap into his gun and fired again.

                “I don’t think so,” Morrison disagreed, then his tone darkened as his attention shifted. “ _He_ might, though.”

                Junkrat, who had been hiding behind a nearby car until the mech was well and truly focused on Roadhog, tossed a concussion mine onto the ground, stepped on it with his peg leg, and detonated it with a flourish. He sailed in an arc through the air out of the smoke and fire, howling with glee, launching grenade after grenade at a small glowing window on the mech’s chassis just under its triple-barreled chaingun: its optic nerve center. In all their years of construct-destruction, neither Junkrat nor Roadhog had ever figured out just why mechanized optic nerve centers were always marked by glowing visors instead of chassis-matching material or something even less conspicuous, but it made the job easier, so they never complained. He came down on a second-story landing opposite the courtyard and fired again.

                The mech raised an arm to block the grenades, but two of the five-round volley still made it past the mech’s thick forearm, impacting the optic center’s housing and cracking the light lens. Roadhog continued to chip away at the mech’s legs, chuckling cruelly as he blasted a joint casing away. The balcony team prepared to add their fire to the mix, but the mech, whether a simulated primitive AI or a drone puppet dancing on Athena’s string, changed tactics and changed the fight in one fell swoop.

                Raising one leg then pivoting on the other, the Talon mech swept around and caught Roadhog across the belly with a massive kick that sent the titanic Junker flying back into a car, half-crushing it in the process. Junkrat paused mid-reload and dashed to the edge of the landing, calling down to his friend, the mech momentarily forgotten until its fusion cannon snapped up to aim directly at his face. The mech’s other arm pointed down at Roadhog, who struggled to dislodge himself from the mess of twisted titanium and wrecked anti-grav bearings. On either arm, three rocket ports opened up to seal the deal, and the electronic buzz of targeting auto-locks filled the air as the safety releases on the rockets clattered open.

                “Zarya! Shield on Roadhog!” Morrison barked. “Mei, wall—”

                With only a nanosecond of hesitation, Aleksandra swung her particle cannon up and deployed a barrier – on Dr. Ziegler, who was still cowering underneath the mech.

                The Talon mech fired, and the Junkers vanished in a dual eruption of fusion blasts and ballistic explosives.

                Junkrat opened his eyes and lifted up his head, and saw a towering, cracked wall of ice before him, black smoke seeping through its cracks. As the black wisps cleared, he also saw Mei standing on the far balcony, endothermic blaster shaking in her hand, a triumphant smirk plastered across her soft features. He beamed back at her; not a wild grin or a flirtatious leer, but a genuine smile. Her expression turn cold, but her pale cheeks turned rosy.

                The cracked lenses in Roadhog’s mask were a blessing for once. It was only a simulation after all, and the rush of input that usually accompanied seeing the world without a dark grey blinder on was totally absent. It was just as well, since the physical pain was almost overwhelming anyway; he couldn’t feel his legs at all, but everything north of his waistline felt like it was being simultaneously set on fire and shot with a nailgun. On the balcony, he saw Aleksandra lining up a shot on the mech’s exposed legs, and a flash of rage cut through the agony. His left arm making a gristly popping noise, Roadhog flung his hook out, wrapped it tight around the Russian’s waist, and yanked her over the edge of the balcony, sending her to the ground face-first with a painful smack. Turning his attention to the still-standing mech, he raised his right arm, took note of the bone sticking out through the skin halfway up, aimed the scrap gun, and pulled the secondary trigger. A solid ball of scrap shot out at the shadow moving through the smoke, closing distance with a sparking leg joint, holding together until it was barely an inch away from impact – and then exploding with as much force as if it had been a scatter shot fired point blank. A thousand kinetically-charged nuts, bolts, and shards of ballistic armor vaporized what was left of the leg joint, and the mech began to pitch over.

                Angela sailed out from under the falling machine, gliding over to where Roadhog had been half-impaled on what was left of the car. In the span of two eyeblinks, she diagnosed twelve injuries that should’ve been fatal, and twice as many that would leave an ordinary human crippled for life. A wet chuckle rumbled out of Roadhog’s wrecked mask, and this time she didn’t hesitate. Two seconds of exposure and the car parts had been removed. Five seconds and his left arm had reconnected. Ten seconds and he was back on his feet just as the mech hit the ground with an earth-shaking crunch.

                Aleksandra barreled out of the dust cloud with a roar and drove her shoulder into Roadhog’s gut, bowling him over onto the pavement. The titanic Junker rolled to his feet in time to catch a pink-nailed fist right to the jaw, and he staggered to his knees. A left hook caught him across the forehead, his skin opening beneath the rubber mask, but when Aleksandra moved to drive a roundhouse kick into his neck, he caught it easily. Standing up and twisting to the side, he tossed her like a doll, flinging her against a streetlight. The pole was bent at almost a 45-degree angle where she hit it on her way to skidding across the ground.

                She was back on her feet in barely a second, wiping blood from her lips and nose even as she charged again.

                The mech had long-since ceased moving – not because it had been shut down, but because the simulation had been paused. Chunks of metal, dust particles, empty shell casings, all hung still in the air as the titanic Junker and the Russian soldier went at each other with a finally-unleashed ferocity that bordered on cathartic.

                Roadhog was slow, and for every blow he missed, Aleksandra landed three, peppering his neck and face with a rapid fusillade of punches that sent his head jerking like a boxer’s speed bag, and set his silver-white hair free from its high ponytail. Each punch took a little more out of his mask, revealing a little more of his face, and in between hits she saw brown eyes beneath bushy white eyebrows, furrowed and bloodshot with rage.  Every second of combat training came back to her in those white-hot moments, and she dodged his brawling swings like a dancer around a malfunctioning washing machine. Blows that would’ve removed an Omnic’s head barely staggered him as they rained across his masked face, and Aleksandra briefly entertained the idea of thanking him for just really letting her unleash – after she won, of course. It was that split second of pride, so assured in her own speed and superiority, and in Roadhog’s lack thereof, that let the towering Junker turn the tide when she tossed the same punch twice in a row.

                He caught her fist in his own, applied crushing weight to her right hand, and summoning excruciating memories of their arm-wrestling match. Aleksandra cried out, as much in shock as in pain, and part of her wrath turned inward, berating herself for such weakness when all her opponent ever did was grunt, even as she struggled to free herself from his grip. Surprisingly, he let go, but not before yanking her forwards; he locked his arm around her own, using her own momentum against her and holding her perpendicular to his shoulder, then slammed his free fist into her gut. The Volskaya PCS, which could take a depleted-uranium round to the chest with barely a paint scratch, _cracked_ , and Aleksandra found herself without an atom of oxygen to her name. She hacked out a gasp just as his fist crashed into her stomach again, and her abdomen flared with sharp, jagged pains as the blow drove shards of armor through the interior lining and into her skin. Applying pressure to her elbow, he brought her around face to face and smashed his forehead against her own, turning her world to a red haze. He caught her in the sternum with a brutal kick, and she flew back into the wall, cracking the white stone and dropping to her knees with a groan.

                Between ordinary opponents, this would’ve been the end of the fight, but neither Aleksandra nor Roadhog were ordinary opponents by any reckoning. No sooner had her knees touched the ground then she launched herself forward, arms outstretched, the muscle memory of combat training temporarily put on hold in the name of pure abject rage.

                They crashed together and rolled along the ground, struggling for dominance, hands scrabbling over one another in search of a grip, of something to break, of any weakness. She straddled his chest, locking her legs around his arms, and wrapped her gloved hands around his throat; even large as they were, they weren’t big enough to wrap all the way around and cut off his oxygen, and he stumbled to his feet with her still holding onto him. Grasping her hips in his hands, he slammed her on a car hood, which loosened her grip, then against the wall, which broke it completely. As soon as she let go, she balled her hands into fists and brought them down on either side of his head, and the blinking, glazed-look in his eyes told her it was _his_ turn to see stars. She dropped off his chest, delivering two rapid palm strikes – one to his right eye, one to his throat – but when she launched the third, he caught her wrist, pulled her close, and flipped her onto the ground. She leveraged her weight and pulled him down with her, punching her free hand across his right eye again, busting open his brow. He anticipated the follow up and pinned her to the asphalt by her wrists, holding the rest of her down with his own bulk.

                Aleksandra’s mask of focus broke into a bloody grin, and she spit in Roadhog’s face.

                “Is that all you’ve got?” she taunted.

                “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” he growled back, and she could see his cheeks rise into a smile through the shattered mask lenses.

                _Oooh, big strong bloke, you are! Well, you got me; now what?_

                His grip on her wrists softened ever so slightly, and Aleksandra felt strangely giddy in that moment, as if standing on the edge of a dock at high tide.

                A wall of ice flung the two combatants apart, and when it crashed back to the ground, the Strike Commander was standing over them, fists clenched so tight that the leather of his gloves was visibly straining. Angela and Mei stared on with wide eyes and open mouths.

                “In all my years,” he began, voice quickly rising from a murmur to a yell, “I have _never_ seen such blatant— what the hell was that?!”

                Aleksandra and Roadhog were back on their feet in an instant, tempers flaring once more.

                “If you could follow the simplest order—”

                “If you didn’t try to steal my kill—”

                “—the _slightest_ awareness of your teammates—”

                “—being a stuck-up—”

                “Enough! Both of you!” The Strike Commander fired his pulse rifle into the air, startling the two out of their shouting match. “Roadhog! Junkrat! You’re on the bench! Reinhardt! Genji! Get in here!”

                “What?” Roadhog growled.

                “Did I stutter, _soldier_?” Morrison spat, the single blue eye visible through the cracked mask burning with anger.

                “I ain’t a soldier, _Strike Commander_.”

                “I’ve noticed.”

                “Uh, for what it’s worth, I ain’t a soldier either,” Junkrat quietly added as he dropped down into the courtyard. He kept his eyes down as he hobbled over to Roadhog. “Cheerin’ for you the whole time, mate,” he whispered, but the titanic Junker didn’t notice.

                “Get out,” Morrison sighed, sounding suddenly tired. “Both of you.”

                Aleksandra saw Roadhog’s dark brown eyes turn to her, fixed on her own emerald green, and he was still staring when he digitized into nothingness, his expression softening to something else deeper than rage that she didn’t have the chance to recognize before it vanished.

                “And as for _you_ ,” the Strike Commander grunted as he turned on her. “You ever disobey a direct order like that again and I’ll have you on the first dropship back to Moscow, you copy?”

                Aleksandra swallowed the mixture of blood and bile in her throat, and nodded. Morrison put his hand to his ear and leaned in. She clenched her teeth.

                “Yes sir.”

                “That’s what I thought.”

                Aleksandra glanced over to Mei, who was staring off into the distance, distracted, embarrassed, or both.

                “The only reason you’re not sitting this one out after that little tantrum,” Morrison continued, “is because Winston and Tracer are in London, and I don’t have anyone else to switch in.”

                Reinhardt and Genji appeared in the courtyard, although neither spoke. Anyone not in the simulation had obviously been watching, and Aleksandra’s face burned red at the public reprimand.

                “Athena! Reset the simulation.”

+++

                “Hey, at least we got outta training early, right? That’s good, yeah?”

                Roadhog stomped out of the VR room, and Junkrat could barely keep up.

                “Hey, if that busted ol’ wanker didn’t break up the blue, you woulda—”

                The towering Junker took a left at the exit, heading down to the training center’s basement. Junkrat was moving so fast he almost crashed into the wall as he tried to make the turn.

                “Listen, why don’t we pop over to the canteen and we see how many a’ those weak little turps we can skull before—say, where you headin’?”

                “Gonna kill something.”

                “Shit, why didn’t you say so? I could use a—”

                “Alone.”

                “Wh—”

                “Tired a’ hearin’ your voice!”

                Roadhog kept walking down the hall, but Junkrat stopped, as if the Junker’s single word had frozen him to the spot. He watched him go, feeling like a hole had opened up in his chest, and stood there until he couldn’t hear the Junker’s noisy boots anymore, and then he stood there for a few minutes more, watching and waiting. The quiet and the loneliness gnawed at the edges of Junkrat’s mind, and he sniffed once, the sound feeling line an intruder in the empty hallway.

                “Guess I’ll just go drink with the flies, then,” he finally sighed, and hobbled back up the ramp.

+++

                It was early evening by the time the rest of the agents made their way to the dining hall, its white tile floors and table sets painted burnished orange by the setting sun streaming through the windowed wall. The tension of the afternoon seemed forgotten by mostly everyone, and the hall was filled with the sounds of relaxed banter. Even the Morrison seemed to be in an uncharacteristically good mood: even with the two late replacements, the new team had made record time to every objective, functioning as a more coordinated unit in the span of two hours than the last week and a half with the Junkers. Reinhardt and Genji were consummate, if slightly eccentric, professionals, and it had felt like the old days, if only for a moment.

                Mei sat down beside Aleksandra, who hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since the fight, and sighed. The Russian woman was staring off into space with a furrowed brow, absentmindedly tapping her knife against the plate. Mei couldn’t tell if she was sulking, deep in thought, or both.

                “Zarya?”

                No response.

                “Aleksandra Zaryanova?”

                _Tap tap tap_.

                “Earth to Zarya, come in Zarya?”

                Mei waved her hand in front of Aleksandra’s face, and the forest-green eyes blinked. The tapping stopped.

                “Are you okay?” Mei asked.

                “I’m fine.”

                Mei tilted her head forward and raised a disbelieving eyebrow. Aleksandra looked insulted.

                “I _am_ fine! See?” she insisted. Aleksandra quickly shoveled forkfuls of food into her mouth, then gave the climatologist a smile like a bear showing its teeth. Mei rolled her eyes. Aleksandra snorted and nodded up at the bar. “I’m doing better than _him_.”

                The agents had given Junkrat a wide berth when they passed by him on their way in: he sat half on a stool, head on the bar, twelve mostly-empty glasses gathered around him like a glass halo of drunkenness. He was presently nursing a thirteenth, resting his chin on his free hand, staring at the mirror with half-open eyes.

                “I wonder where his friend is,” Aleksandra snorted.

                “Why? You want to fight him _again_?” Mei asked, watching the Junker drain the glass and set it resignedly on the bar before holding a wobbly finger up, motioning for another from the dining hall’s automated systems. Aleksandra didn’t reply, but she didn’t need to; Mei already knew what the answer was. As if from nowhere, a funny little notion sprung into the climatologist’s head, and after a long gulp of tea, she stood up and walked over to the bar.

                “Come over to big-note yourself, eh?” Junkrat mumbled, idly running his finger around the rim of the fourteenth glass.

                “Um, no,” she said, feeling suddenly self-conscious. She’d felt so confident a second ago, why was she nervous now? “I’m sorry you got taken off the team.”

                “Nah, you ain’t,” Junkrat snorted. “You been waitin’ for me an’ Roadie to get the flick since we showed up.”

                “Well—”

                “S’fine. Errybody always does. Can’t stand us longer’n they’ll be bothered to.”

                The Australian’s coherency was resignedly deteriorating by the syllable.

                “Used to think ol’ ‘Hog whazza only one who’d put up with me, even’n th’ Outback.” He took a sip and choked it down. “Now _he_ can’t even stand me. Prob’ly killin’ bots wif my face on’em as we speak. Not like you an...” He motioned over his shoulder to Aleksandra, who was doing her best _not_ to look like she was intently watching the two of them. “…you an’ comrade what’s-her-face.”

                Mei let out a giggle before she could stop herself, and quickly clamped a hand over her mouth.                 Aleksandra’s eyebrows arched, and her stare turned livid; she couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she could tell they were talking about _her_ – and that filthy Australian had just made Mei laugh.

                “Thick as thieves, you lot,” he murmured, and gave a little wave over his shoulder to the Russian. The metal fork in Aleksandra’s hand began to bend under her grip.

                “We don’t _always_ get along,” Mei admitted, “but we _do_ care about each other. That’s what friends do, right?”

                “Sure,” Junkrat replied, sounding unconvinced. He finally turned and looked up at her with a sad smile, bloodshot orange eyes gazing into light-brown, and Mei felt a flutter in her chest that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with. “You’re alright, Dr. Zoo.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled back.

                Then his stare lazily fell onto her breasts, pushed up and together by the slightly-tight blue tank top just a little more than she liked even when no one was looking, and precisely at eye-level for the slouching, bent-over Junker to ogle.

                “Crikey, you got a set!” he slurred, wild eyebrows rising in crude desire.

                “混蛋!” She snatched the glass out of his hands and threw the contents in his face, soaking him in beer; he reeled backwards and fell off the stool with a thump, and Mei slammed the glass onto the bar before stomping back to her table, beet-red and fuming. The rest of the operatives, who had been silently watching the conversation between the two, quickly turned back to their tables and resumed talking as if nothing had happened.

                Mei plopped angrily down into her seat just as the drunk Junker scrambled to his feet and staggered out the door. She didn’t watch him leave.

                “If that was _your_ second round, I think you won,” Aleksandra remarked proudly once a little of the crimson had faded from Mei’s face. The climatologist shot her a withering look, but she just smiled back.

                “闭嘴.”

+++

                “Desert.”

                The world around Roadhog turned into an endless sea of yellow-orange dunes, and he shook his head.

                “More rocks.”

                Now he stood in a rocky valley, high canyon walls jutting up on either side.

                “Open.”

                “Mr. Hog,” Athena chimed in, using the same title he’d told her to use since that awkward encounter in the bathroom nearly two weeks ago, “is there somewhere _in particular_ you’d like me to recreate?”

                He paused, listening to the sound of his own breathing, staring off into empty space. It wasn’t a pause. It was hesitation.

                “Australia. Outback.”

                “Mr. Hog, your heartrate is quite elevated, and I’m detecting serious signs of stress on both a mental and physical level. I’d highly advise against running a combat scenario—”

                “Not gonna run a fight. Just take me there.”

                Without a reply, the world around Roadhog changed to an irradiated sand plain with only the barest vegetation dotting the landscape. In the far, hazy distance, what was left of ancient mountains rose weakly to the nuclear-white sky. The air smelled of fried ozone and gasoline. The sun felt like it was cooking the skin on his body with every passing second. This was the Outback, alright, but not what Roadhog wanted.

                “Older. Before it got ruined.”

                The world transformed a final time, and the breath caught in Roadhog’s throat.

                The ground beneath his feet was a massive plain, red rock and dried mud filled with brittle, light green vegetation, the sky a shade of blue he had not seen in decades. Flat-topped mountains stood proud in the distance, wavering in the heat. He could smell the dust in his respirator.

                He fumbled with the straps, pulled it off his face, let it drop to the ground, and opened his eyes wide.

                The focusing effect of the mask meant nothing in a VR simulation, but without it in the real world, using his real eyes, the flood of sights, sounds, and smells was almost agony. He would not shut his eyes even to blink. The dirt crunching beneath his feet sounded like an avalanche, the breeze across his shoulders carrying the scents of the city a thousand kilometres to the south. The leather around his wrists bit into his skin. On a rock three football fields away, a thorny devil woke up, gulped down a passing ant, and went back to basking in the sun.

                He turned back and saw the house, saw the timbers he knew by hand, the garage he knew by heart. It was the only thing that didn’t hurt to look at.

                “Mr. Hog, your brain activity—”

                _I missed you so much, Mako._

                She was there in the doorway, green eyes and short, curly brown hair. Strong jaw. Had she always had a strong jaw?

                _Where’ve you been?_

                He dropped to his knees and cried and cried and cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy CRAP it's been a while since I've updated this. Sorry, I've been super-busy with recording a playthrough of Doom and playing a bunch of games and getting ready for Mass Effect: Andromeda, but the primary reason it's taken me so long is this: I've sort of fallen out-of-love with Overwatch as a game. I love the characters and the game world and the lore (when they both to be consistent) but the playerbase annoys me so much that actually playing the game sort of makes me uncontrollably angry! Who knew, right? Anyway, I'm going to try and pick this back up on a more regular schedule, but no promises. Hey, at least we've finally got some open tension between our two favorite tanks, right? Right? Guys? Where are you going?


	7. The Night Before I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zarya sings a song! Roadhog gets mad! Rev up those angsters!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). Make sure to check the bottom notes for a change in the first chapter.
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                Aleksandra lurched out of bed and onto the floor, the sweat-soaked covers still clinging to her as if reluctant to let go. She twisted and kicked, whimpering as the fabric seemed to tighten the more she struggled. At last, she yanked her legs free and stumbled to her feet, pushing herself from the floor with a grunt, refusing the silent help of the bedside table or the vacant desk. Everything felt like metal; the sheets, the carpet, even her own skin. She could still smell the smoke of the dream, and the phantom pain of thousands of automated hands, grasping, restraining, tearing, and strangling sent her careening towards the bathroom.

                She didn’t bother with the light – this was a routine she was all too familiar with – and slapped the faucet on with a loud clank; her hands were beneath the stream in an instant, pooling the cold water, and the second she felt the water rise to her thumbs, she splashed it upwards into her face. The water, so frigid in her hands, barely registered on her skin, and she splashed herself again. She felt the contact but not the temperature, and she dragged her fingernails across her cheeks, desperate to cut through the numbness of the nightmare’s aftermath. She felt nothing now, only the industrial sheen of solid steel.

                She opened her eyes and stared ahead; from the darkness of the bathroom mirror, two forest-green optics glared back, glowing more brightly by the second, illuminating the noseless Omnic face whose gunmetal jaw hinged slowly open to emit a scream of binary noise.

+++               

                Aleksandra opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a full five minutes before she mustered the strength to get out of bed. She shuffled to the bathroom, fumbling hand swiping across the control panel, bathing the black tile in blue-white light, and twisted the faucet on, letting it run idle, drowning out the static still ringing in her ears.

                She stared at her face in the mirror, and cautiously prodded her cheek, her forehead, her chin. Everything was as it should be – green eyes (ringed in darkness), defiant nose (slightly itchy), strong jaw (aching with fatigue), handsome scar (aching more than her jaw). Her white tank top draped loosely over muscular white flesh, black boxers hugging thighs that were always thicker than she wanted, but still distinctly _human_. She cupped her hands beneath the water but her fingers wouldn’t stay closed; her wrists wouldn’t stay still. Aleksandra sighed into the sink, switched the faucet off, and wandered out into the barracks hallway.

                Pale, cold moonbeams streamed through the common room’s wall-spanning windows, but the interior was bathed in warm oranges as the flames in the fireplace cast familiar shadows on the floor. Unperturbed by the shifting light, Aleksandra’s feet found the staircase and carried her down by rote, delivering her to the assortment of chairs and couches around the stone fireplace. She stepped in front of one seat in particular, a massive leather with entirely too much padding, and let herself fall back, sinking into the enveloping comfort with a small sigh.

                _How many nights in this chair? At least three every week._ _I should speak with Dr. Ziegler._

                She rubbed her aching eyes and settled her gaze on the fire, staring through the flames as much as at them. The fire drew memory from her like poison from a wound: freezing nights in camp huddling with her rifle as close to the flames as she could get without burning herself, the burning carcasses of wrecked Omnics crunching beneath her boots, the smoldering wreckage of what used to be homes. Her eyes felt wet but still she stared, and the pain gave way to something else, something older, something that had found its way into her bones before war. The smell of schi on her mother’s hands as they ran through her hair, brushing strands from her face as she curled up on the couch in front of the fireplace. A soft voice singing:

                _Ночь пришла,_  
                Темноту привела.  
                Вышла маменька,  
                Закрыла став еньки.  
                Баю-бай,  
                Засыпай…

                The last notes faded from her lips, and Aleksandra’s chest tightened. Her fingers dug into the chair’s imitation-leather armrests. She’d gone through pain to find comfort, but now she’d gone too far, much too far back, back into pain again. She rolled her eyes and wiped her nose on her forearm with a sniff, trying to think of other things, trying to wrench her focus away. Exploding Omnics, the smell of sweat, the feeling of that big oaf’s mask ripping underneath her knuckles, his hands around her—

                “Got a nice voice.”

                With a yelp and as much grace as a grizzly bear startled from hibernation, Aleksandra rolled over the side of the armchair and staggered to her feet, throwing her fist back, ready to swing.

                From his seat on the couch, Roadhog raised his massive hands in as non-threatening a gesture as he could make, and let out a chuckle like gasoline being poured into an empty barrel. Aleksandra did _not_ relax, and instead began to weigh the pros and cons of starting a brawl with the enormous Junker in the middle of the night. On one hand, a _lot_ of furniture would get broken, plus she was already on thin ice with the Strike Commander. On the other hand, she’d finally get to shatter that stupid gas mask – which she noticed was actually sitting on the coffee table, not on the head she would’ve so enjoyed punching.

                Her eyes darted up to Roadhog’s face, but with his back to the fire, the orange glow illuminating his broad shoulders and biceps that seemed to bulge even at rest, she could only make out the barest trace of an abrupt jawline and a thin layer of silver-white stubble. She snorted, and lowered her hands.

                _Suppose I’ll just have to imagine his face when I’m dreaming of breaking it._

“What are you doing out here?” she questioned.

                “Sittin’.”

                Aleksandra’s fists clenched as the list of reasons to throw herself across the room at Roadhog grew longer.

                “Can’t sleep either, huh?” he asked.

                “No,” she sighed, and forced her hands to open as she cautiously sat back down. Roadhog nodded, and the shoulder-length, silver-white hair across his shoulders shifted. She kept her attention on the fire, trying, for the moment, to ignore him, but she could feel his eyes on her, wandering leisurely over her body from the safety of the concealing shadow hiding his face. She crossed her arms over her chest, pulled her legs up into the seat, and wished she’d worn a robe. It wasn’t the first time she’d known he was staring – even hidden behind those black lenses, he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he thought he was – but here, with just the two of them alone, the feeling was intimately objectifying. She turned her head and looked directly where she knew his eyes were. “And what keeps a criminal mastermind up at night?”

                Roadhog laughed, the sound like a faulty motor, and the silver hair fell from his shoulders.

                “Oh, that ain’t me,” he assured her. “Junkrat’s the boss. I’m just the standover.”

                Aleksandra raised a quizzical eyebrow.

                “Means I’m the muscle.”

                She nodded in understanding, and found her eyes wandering to his monstrous biceps again, the titanic hands that dwarfed her own.

                _You certainly are._

                “Then what keeps the muscle up at night?” she asked. “You do not strike me as one with many regrets.”

                Thoughts, half-memories, _forest-green eyes, a nuclear scream_ began to bubble up from the tarn of Roadhog’s mind, but he plunged them back into the murk before they could take concrete shape.

                “Got a few,” he muttered, and gave a shrug. Without the muffling filter of the mask, his resonant voice was almost soothing, the rumble of an idling engine heard through rain. “How ‘bout you?”

                Aleksandra’s eyes turned back to the fire.

                “Being a soldier is…” she trailed off, and glanced at Roadhog’s hands, lying still on his belly and resting on the back of the couch, motionless, like hers should be. “I was an athlete before I was a soldier. Combat is still new to me. Some lessons are harder to digest than others.”

                Roadhog chuckled again.

                “One way of puttin’ it.”

                Aleksandra’s lip began to curl, and her hands, hidden by her arms, balled into fists again.

                “How else should I put it?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Should I say I have terrible dreams every night of crushing metal hands and gunfire that never stops? Hm? Should I say whenever I think of my comrades, I only remember them in death? Would that please you?” Her fingernails dug deep into her palms, but the pain only reached the periphery of Aleksandra’s senses, a red target sight squarely on the gigantic Junker sitting across from her. “I have seen horrors, _Junker_ , but only as an observer. Can you claim such a thing?”

                For a minute, the lobby was utterly silent save for the crackling of the fireplace. Aleksandra uncrossed her arms and laid them on the armrests, her hands now still as cold steel.

                “You don’t think I should be here.”

                “No, I do not,” Aleksandra answered. “I gave up everything to fight for my country when the Omnics attacked again _. Everything_. And when I returned home, I found it ravaged not by machines, but by the same men who ran and hid while I and my comrades fought and died for them.” Her fingers tightened into the armrests. “They were thieves and scavengers mostly, parasites living off the ruins the Omnics left in their wake, but a few…”

                She nodded at Roadhog. If he reacted at all, she couldn’t tell.

                “…a few were _monsters_. They preyed on the survivors, taking whatever they wanted from those who had no strength left to defend themselves. They lived for nothing but their own satisfaction.” Aleksandra’s heartrate rose as the anger began to seep into her voice. “Some of them pleaded for their lives when we found them, said they didn’t know what they were doing. They knew. They _all_ knew.”

                Her right eye twitched.

                “Now you are here and I am expected to work with you, as if I do not know who you are and _what_ you are.”

                She leaned forward in the chair, channeling every ounce of control to keep her voice from shaking.

                “You do not belong here,” she spat. “You belong in the ground.”

                Aleksandra sat back and waited, her muscles coiling like a snake anticipating a strike, but it didn’t come; the Junker’s muscles tensed, almost imperceptibly, but he said nothing. Finally, Roadhog reached for his mask on the table and put it on over his loose hair, giving him an even more animalistic appearance. He leaned into the firelight, and the flames gleamed off his black lenses.

                “Never took anything I didn’t need, never killed anyone who didn’t have it coming.”

                “You ‘needed’ the crown jewels?”

                “Exception.”

                Roadhog lifted his massive bulk off the couch and stood up, pulling a pair of white, silk pajama bottoms with him.

                “The Pachimaru toys?”

                Roadhog turned on his heel and started to walk back towards the stairs.

                “Exception.”

                She stood up and stalked out behind him, muscles tightening more as her anger began to override her survival instincts.

                “How many exceptions have you made, hm? What has the _honorable_ Roadhog taken as an _exception_ because he ‘needed’ it at the time? How much food have you stolen from starving mouths? How many innocent men have you killed because they looked at you the wrong way?”

                Roadhog stomped on without reply.

                “How many village girls have caught your eye?”

                The towering Junker came to a halt as if a rope around his waist had just been pulled tight.

                “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.” His voice rattled through gritted teeth like a grave yawning wide through an industrial sander.

                “Is it the ones who are so small and weak they can’t fight back? Or is it the tough ones, the ones who never _stop_ fighting the entire time?”

                Roadhog’s head swiveled around over his shoulder, glaring at her with lenses black as a shark’s eye. His enormous hands curled into white-knuckled fists, but Aleksandra didn’t care; she finally struck a nerve, and she was going to hammer it for all she was worth.

                “That must be your type; the tough ones.” Her voice dropped low and cold, seething with disgust. “Perhaps that is why you cannot take your eyes off of _me_.”

                Aleksandra made the mistake of blinking, and when she opened her eyes again, she was pinned to a window, two feet off the ground, glass cold against her back, and Roadhog’s gigantic hands against her chest and neck. The Junker was fuming, sucking in rapid, ragged breaths through his mask, arms almost shaking.

                “Go ‘head, call me a thief and a killer,” he bellowed. “You’re damn right. I’ve killed men for less than lookin’, and I take what I want ‘cause anybody who tries t’ stop me ends up dead!”

                Between her stomach catching up with the rapid shift in elevation and the overwhelming nearness of the gigantic Junker _arms as big as steel girders, the lingering stench of gasoline, the massive hand around her neck that let her breathe but told her escape was impossible_ Aleksandra could only stare in surprise. Roadhog shifted his hands to her shoulders and pulled her close, squeezing her between his bulk and the window, and brought his mask within a centimeter of her nose.

                “But I _never_ put hands on anybody who didn’t ask me to,” he growled, and her entire body vibrated with the resonance of his voice. For what seemed like an hour, neither of them spoke.

                “Your hands are on _me_ now,” she finally hissed through a clenched jaw, emerald eyes blazing defiance.

                “Is that what you want?”

                Aleksandra’s breath caught in her throat, and then the room was sweltering, as if the fireplace had raged out of control; she swallowed hard, desperate for moisture in the desert that her mouth had become, but found only heavy, dry air. Off the ground and half-straddling his chest, she was weightless in his arms.

                “No,” she lied.

                Roadhog lowered her to the floor and let go, taking a stumbling step or two back.

                “Sorry,” he grunted, and quickly turned away before stammering out, “Good luck tomorrow.”

                Aleksandra said nothing, and rubbed her arms, oddly cold without his hands, as she sat down on the floor, trying to steady her breathing. She watched Roadhog wander up the stairs, then turned her gaze back to the fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Although I'm just getting back into Overwatch with the Uprising event, this is a short sequence that's been in my head for some time. Sorry that it's not a full-fledged chapter, but it sets up the next one pretty nicely, and it serves as a continuation of the action we saw in the VR simulation.
> 
> I actually struggled a lot with this chapter, in spite of its short length, because I wasn't quite sure which direction to take; I found myself at the crossroads between 'awkward/cute' and 'angsty/hot,' and I took the latter, obviously. There IS another, cuter version of this chapter in my head, but 'awkward/cute' doesn't really suit my interpretation of Roadhog and Zarya all that well, at least not in this stage of their relationship. Not to spoil anything, but I always imagined the two of them would become physically intimate fairly early on, but not emotionally connected until MUCH later, while Junkrat and Mei...well, you'll find out.


	8. Numbani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day is finally here: it's time to transport the Doomfist! But Reaper has other plans, and also an appearance by Akande Ogundimu? The Junker boys get stuffed, Mei gets hot and heavy, and Aleksandra learns an important lesson about communication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thanks for taking a look! If you like what you see here, you can follow me on my [Tumblr](http://saigontimemd.tumblr.com/), where I'll periodically post about this in addition to all the ridiculous stuff that I post about (which is still mostly Overwatch). Make sure to check the bottom notes for a change in the first chapter.
> 
> Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy!

                Mei’s thick, black-rimmed glasses slid off her nose as the dropship lightly grazed an air pocket; Aleksandra’s hand shot out and caught them in mid-fall, saving the spectacles but waking the climatologist with a half-surprised snort in the process.

                “Dropped these,” Aleksandra whispered to her sleepy friend.

                “Thanks,” Mei mumbled before putting the glasses back on her face and returning to her previous position: using Aleksandra’s bare shoulder as a pillow.

                “You should start getting ready,” the makeshift sleep-aid insisted. Mei grunted, and less than a minute later, Aleksandra felt the climatologist’s soft, steady snore against her arm.

                Aleksandra shook her head, and looked around the darkened cabin, the dim red and white emergency lamps illuminating the interior with sporadic, stark beams, leaving those within half in shadow, half in light. It reminded her of the APCs back in Russia, the cramped, sleek sardine-carrier troop transports, of the re-fitted Mi-4 Hound loading bays. No matter the era, the result was the same: tiny pools of illumination, and in between nothing but fear, weaponry, and soldiers waiting to fight. But this wasn’t back home, not even close. The other Overwatch operatives were all ready in their own way, but this was a far cry from the white knuckle, ‘lobby of the apocalypse’ she had experienced before every deployment. This was surreal, even routine – this was relaxed.

                Genji sat cross-legged in his seat, visor dark, hands resting on his knees. Aleksandra could hear the faintest hum coming from his corner of the cabin, but had given up trying to discern if it was electric or not. Reinhardt would periodically get up and stretch out, throwing a few mock punches as he paced back and forth, running diagnostics on his massive armor suit after each round before plopping himself down again with an impatient huff. At one point he closed his eyes and tried to take deep, calming breaths like the cyborg ninja to his right, but grew bored after barely ten seconds. Morrison was still reading through city schematics and intelligence briefings, just as he’d been doing the last hour and a half, stopping only to check his gear and clean his gun repeatedly, as if some microscopic mote of dust had infiltrated his pulse rifle in the ten minutes since he last cleaned it. Angela was intently reading what Aleksandra had first assumed was important medical documentation, but when the medic’s hand tipped forward occasionally, she could see a glossy paperback novel with a pyramid on the cover hidden inside.

                And Mei? Still snoring. Aleksandra carefully slid the climatologist’s now-half-off glasses down her nose and hooked them onto her jacket pocket to absolutely no response at all.

                Aleksandra’s gaze drifted up to the cockpit, where Ana sat, still strapped into the pilot’s chair, still guiding the dropship by hand in favor of Athena’s autopilot. In the curved cockpit reflection, she caught a glimpse of a Sphinx-like smile on the older woman’s features, and wondered if she felt as Aleksandra did, at home in a deployment, out of place marking time between missions.

                The dropship skirted another pressure pocket, and jerked to the side. Aleksandra’s hand instinctively reached for her particle cannon, the ghost racket of explosions and crash landings ringing in her ears, but Ana righted the aircraft in barely a second, restoring the smooth ride with a reaction time almost as fast as the ship’s automated gyroscopic stabilizer systems. Aleksandra sighed. Lacking anything better to do that wouldn’t also require her to deprive Mei of a pillow, she leaned back against the cool leather seat and continued to think about literally anything else besides what had happened in the barrack common room the night before, letting the muffled roar of the passing clouds outside gradually white out her anger until…

                In the cockpit reflection, Ana saw Aleksandra’s head nod to the side, resting against the white metal cabin.

                “I’ve never seen her fall asleep so quickly,” Athena noted, her smooth, synthetic voice in Ana’s earpiece. “At Gibraltar, she takes at least two hours on average to—”

                “I know,” Ana interrupted quietly. “E.T.A.?”

                “Forty-five minutes,” Athena answered. “Although that number may change, given we’re still carrying unlogged cargo.”

                “Have you pinpointed the anomaly yet?” Ana asked, adjusting the flightpath slightly, weaving around a flock of very surprised seagulls.

                “We seem to be carrying roughly 700 lbs. in our cabin floor storage compartment, but I can’t tell you what it is; the dropship lacks component sensors within its storage units.”

                “I’ll have Winston take a look when we all get back.”

                “It would be easy enough to verify the cont—”

                “No need,” Ana said, looking back at the storage compartment in the cabin floor. The closer she looked, the more the compartment door seemed to bulge up from the floor. The sniper’s grip tightened on the throttle. “I’ll deal with it when we get there.”

+++

                “What is with all this _standing around_?” Reinhardt groaned, pacing back and forth before the holographic display of the city below. In glowing blue translucence, the metropolis of Numbani glimmered before the team as intercepted police scanner reports chattered softly in the background: tense but optimistic reports as the Unity Day celebrations across the city began. Amidst the sea of electric blue, a small orange dot made its way through the heart of the city towards its destination at the Numbani Heritage Museum, where it would stay for several weeks as part of a traveling exhibit: the Doomfist.

                “I agree,” Aleksandra added. “We should strike first.”

                “Not how this works, soldier,” the Strike Commander sighed, crossing his arms. There was an edge in his voice – he hated the waiting, too, but there was no other option. “We’re just here as a precaution. If Talon moves on the package, we’ll be on them in thirty. Until then…well, I’m not sure they’d appreciate the hand, at least not from a multinational strike team that’s not supposed to exist led by a wanted fugitive who’s not supposed to be alive.”

                Genji placed a reassuring hand on Aleksandra’s arm. She recoiled from his steely touch.

                “If it helps,” he said, evidently unfazed by her revulsion, “Talon _rarely_ passes up an opportunity to—”

                Two dozen fuzzy blips appeared on the map, surrounding the Doomfist and closing in quickly.

                “Athena, report!” Morrison barked.

                “Multiple personnel jammers detected on the ground; invisible at close range, but not from up here. Talon standard issue.”

                “Ha! Finally!” Reinhardt laughed.

                The dropship descended past skyscraper level, the reflective panels on its underbelly rendering it invisible to those below – at least until the side door opened and multiple rappelling ropes dropped down to the street. The police scanner erupted into chaos as the Talon operatives commenced their attack on the Doomfist transport, and Aleksandra felt a small but strong grip on her arm. She turned to see Mei, looking even more pale than usual.

                “Are you scared?” Aleksandra asked, sounding more aggressive than she meant to.

                “No,” Mei denied before sheepishly adding “Yes.”

                “Good,” Morrison cut in before Aleksandra had a chance to reply. “Fear’s a natural response to dropping into combat. Fear’s gonna keep you alive today.”

                Mei’s eyes widened, and Aleksandra shot the Strike Commander an angry glare.

                “But fear’s not gonna control you today,” he hastily added, straightening up and resting his pulse rifle on his shoulder before turning to face the whole team. “That’s why we trained so hard. Keep your heads down, check your corners, watch the crossfire, and we’ll all walk home like heroes.” He strode over to a rope and passed it through the automated hitch on his belt. “The world may not be ready for Overwatch yet, but they sure as hell need us now, and we all know it. Let’s show’em what we got. I’ll see you on the ground.”

                And then he disappeared over the side.

                As the others went over, Aleksandra turned back to Mei and patted her on the back.

                “Stay behind me, comrade,” she said with a smile, and dropped out of the doorway.

                “Don’t have to tell me twice,” Mei sighed, and followed her down.

                Ana watched the rest leave, then walked over to the floor compartment. With a sharp kick, the bulging doors popped open, and Roadhog and Junkrat emerged with a gasp. Ana shook her head and drew her tranquilizer gun.

                “Give me one reason not to dump your sleeping bodies in the ocean,” she spat.

                “Stunning good looks?” Junkrat suggested as he looked up into the barrel of her gun.

                “Two reasons,” Ana added.

                “Wanted another chance,” Roadhog said, heaving himself out of the compartment.

                “And you thought you’d get one by stowing away on a dangerous mission to a city full of innocent people who all know you as wanted criminals?”

                “Well, when you put it like that…” Junkrat conceded, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly.

                “You gonna shoot us or what?” Roadhog asked impatiently.

                Ana’s stern features broke into a grin that made the two Junkers nervous.

                “Not this time,” she explained, holstering her dart gun. “I’m going down. _You_ are going to wait five minutes, then follow me, is that clear?”

                The two Junkers nodded.

                “I didn’t catch that.”

                “Yes, ma’am,” they answered in unison.

                “Better.” She reached into an equipment locker and produced two small earpieces. “Put these on; they’re turned to my frequency. You two will shadow the squad on the ground, but you will not interfere, is that clear?”

                “But what if—”

                “That’s my concern. You two are on damage control.”

                “What.” Roadhog’s response was more a statement than a question.

                “Talon loves collateral damage. Your new assignment is to make sure there isn’t any.”

                “That ain’t exactly what w—” Junkrat started.

                “Or you can sit up here and think of an excuse to tell the Strike Commander while you sleep off the tranquilizer darts. Your choice.”

                The two Junkers were silent.

                “I thought so,” Ana said, satisfied. “By the way, what do you know about Numbani?”

                “It’s a city?” Roadhog answered with a shrug.

                “Maybe you should look at the intel brief before you come, hm?”

                The sniper vanished over the side without another word.

                “Told you this was a bad idea,” Junkrat spat. Roadhog grunted, and turned to the hologram of the city, watching the small orange blips of the Overwatch agents closing in on the Doomfist – and its halo of distorted Talon signals. The titanic Junker’s knuckles tightened. “But _you_ wanted to be a _hero_!”

                “New leaf, remember?” Roadhog reminded him. Junkrat rolled his eyes.

                “Fine,” he groaned. “Let’s go be bloody heroes, then.”

                “Ain’t been five minutes.”

                “We really gonna wait that long?”

                Roadhog chuckled, and grabbed a rope.

                It was a short ride down, descending past gleaming skyscrapers and towering palm trees, Junkrat perched on Roadhog’s back as they slid to the street, the tactical rope barely a tickle against the rough callouses of the gigantic Junker’s hands. The crowd that had gathered to watch the hovering door in the sky jumped back en masse as the two hit the ground with a menacing stomp, tearing their weapons from their holsters and holding them high. Junkrat gave his most dashing smile, a crooked snarl that a blind man on a dark night might mistake for benevolence, but his expression darkened as he saw who was looking back: on all sides, the citizens of Numbani gawked in a mixture of curiosity and fear, the humans’ eyes wide and mouths agape, surprise in different shades of brown, yellow and white – and silver. Behind his mask, Roadhog’s face twisted into a scowl as he saw dozens of omnics cowering among the humans, their ocular units turned a caution yellow. The humans whispered amongst themselves, and the omnics sent quiet bursts of omnicode to one another, no doubt communicating the same fears.

                Roadhog yanked the chain on his belt, swinging the hook up into his waiting hand, his head twitching oddly to the side.

                “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Junkrat spat.

+++

                “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

                Aleksandra slammed herself down against a parked hover-car, ducking below another volley of small arms fire as her shield recharged – an action she’d repeated enough in the last ten minutes to earn a light bruise on her arm. The push forward had been grueling, a prairie dog crawl of poking above and around cover, then dashing forward before the bullets could start flying again. There was precious little to show for every inch they scraped away: the Talon operatives, outnumbering the Overwatch agents at least three to one, simply fell back in orderly formations, spitting withering waves of suppressing fire as they retreated to safer ranges.

                “How’s that shield, old man?” she called across the street.

                “Just a few more seconds!” Reinhardt barked back, grimacing as rounds bounced off the shoulders of his armor, too large to hide completely behind a now-smoking, bullet-hole-ridden minivan. Under the concentrated fire of the street team, their first big push had lasted barely six seconds, Reinhardt’s glowing blue barrier buckling immediately, then shattering like glass in what felt like the blink of an eye. Now that they knew how much time they had, the Overwatch agents had spent the last few tense minutes coordinating the next advance. All they had to wait was for the barrier to recharge to full capacity.

                “They’re reloading.” Athena’s update as she watched the Talon mercenaries from an angle the others could not was music to Aleksandra’s ears, and she charged around the side of the car, Reinhardt at her side, before hunkering down behind the next row of vehicles. The few Talon soldiers with full magazines sent sporadic bursts of fire down range, but they were poorly-aimed and poorly-timed. In spite of the bullets whizzing past her head, Aleksandra found herself smiling; slowing an advance could be as stressful as advancing itself, and the almost-panicked replies to their short ground gain meant the Talon operatives’ nerves were wearing thin.

                “Something funny, Zaryanova?” the Strike Commander grunted over the voice channel. He was two cars back, and blind-firing over the trunk of a high-end hover-car that she wouldn’t have been able to afford with twenty years’ pay. She shook her head, but couldn’t shake the grin.

                “It’s good to be shot at by real humans,” she replied.

                In the midst of the chaos and sweltering city heat, there was a moment of collective incredulity as the other five Overwatch agents all raised an eyebrow in Aleksandra’s direction. She shrugged.

                “I’ll take your word for it,” Morrison grunted.

                “Barrier restored! Let’s do this!” Reinhardt bellowed, and without waiting for an answer, he rose to his feet like a medieval statue come to life. For a nanosecond, the eyes of the stylized lion across his left forearm crackled blue, then the mouth yawned wide in a silent roar and the barrier blazed to life. Just as the first volley of fire pinged harmlessly against the rectangular energy shield, the others were firing before they even gained their feet. From the back of the street, a biotic grenade sailed through the air in a gorgeous arc, shattering against the pavement and engulfing the Talon operatives in a choking purple haze; Aleksandra swept her particle beam across the street, turning the mercenaries’ black ballistic armor to charred cinders, which the Strike Commander shattered entirely with concentrated pulse-fire bursts. Using Reinhardt’s back as a spring-board, Genji threw himself up and forward, raining kinetically-boosted shurikens down as he closed to melee range, a blue beam of light connecting him to Angela’s Caduceus staff.

                From over Aleksandra’s shoulder, Mei yelled and launched icicles blindly into the toxic fog, her eyes shut tight.

                When the smoke cleared, ten Talon mercenaries lay dead, and the others were vanishing up the street and around the corner in an open run.

                The cyborg ninja landed atop a stop-sign, and casually brushed a streak of ice from a too-close icicle off his shoulder.

                “It will take more than that to kill us,” he declared, the tone of satisfaction audible even in his synthesized voice. Morrison hit the stop-sign as he passed, throwing Genji off-balance.

                “They weren’t _trying_ to kill us,” he growled, “just stall us. Keep moving.”

+++

                “Th-they just took out half of us! We can’t hold’em!”

                The soldier’s voice was trembling, almost a scream in his ears, the signal buzzing with decibels. He tried to identify the voice, high-pitched and fresh, another gun plucked from a free college ride just as the chaos of war crept over the horizon.

                _Vasquez? Jenkins? Wilson?_

                Not that it mattered, of course.

                “Understood,” he replied, calm as the grave. “Fall back to this position and reinforce Alpha team.”

                “Y-yes sir,” the response came, just a little more at ease.

                As the channel clicked closed, he turned his attention to the security specialist currently fiddling with the Doomfist transport, desperately trying to override the hovering display case’s FoF systems. The original plan had been to take the display guards hostage – or at least use their corpses – but then the OR15s got involved, and the guards’ biometric transmitters went dead when the guards did. Now the display case’s security center was hidden behind six inches of steel and who knew how many safeguards, and his specialist was breathing so hard it was audible without opening a channel. Now they had to do things _her_ way.

                “How long?” he asked, kneeling beside the specialist.

                _Wilson, that was his name_. But was it the soldier’s name or the specialist’s?

                The specialist jumped, but his hold on the drill remained steady.

                “Uh, not long now,” he stammered. “I don’t think.”

                “You don’t think?”

                The specialist recoiled slightly, as if expecting retaliation for the vague answer. None came.

                “I mean, uh, I’ve made it about four inches through. Nothing else’s kicked in, so we should be good.”

                He stood up and sighed.

                _Overwatch is marching up through Numbani and all I have to go on is ‘we should be good.’_

                The sound of combat boots pounding pavement echoed up the street; the dozen or so Talon agents positioned throughout the courtyard stiffened, sighting assault rifles and SMGs down the alley, fingers dangerously tense on triggers. He rolled his eyes, and wished he had a halfway-trained team. Then again, that would defeat the purpose of the operation in the first place, he remembered.

                A loud, metallic _shunk_ yanked his attention back to the present, and the security specialist pulled the thick chunk of metal off of the display case, revealing a mess of wires and ports within.

                “Good job,” he said, and patted the specialist on the shoulder. The operative shivered as all feeling on his left side disappeared.

                He reached into a latched pocket on his belt and pulled out a small silver thumbdrive with a stylized purple skull emblazoned on the side, then opened a channel to a control room thousands of miles away.

                “We’re through,” he grunted.

                “Menos mal!” the woman on the other end exclaimed with exaggerated relief. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten _all_ abo—”

                “Where do I stick it?”

                There was a second of silence, then an adolescent snort.

                “Any port, I’ll do the rest,” the reply finally came.

                He knelt down and shoved the thumbdrive into one of the open ports amidst the spiderweb of wires and circuits. A small light within turned red, then green, then purple.

                “How long?” he asked, standing up and looking ahead. The few remaining Talon operatives from the first squad had rejoined the main group, perching behind columns and aiming over guardrails that provided the same amount of protection as a piece of wet paper.

                “Well, seeing as it’s a completely new security system I’ve never encountered and had no briefing on or experience with…”

                He could already hear the storm of clicks and the hum of holographic interfaces being flung around on her end of the channel.

                “ _Sombra!”_

“Thirty seconds,” she sighed.

                A bright blue rectangle rounded the corner, and one of the Talon operatives shouted an expletive.

                In the same span of time it took the security specialist to blink, he saw everything: the towering _Reinhardt_ paladin, hammer raised in triumph even as he marched into a hailstorm of ballistic death, the broken _Genji_ ninja, his arm bending back to launch a volley of shurikens, the musclebound _Zaryanova_ Russian, her finger tight on the trigger of her particle shield, the angelic _Angela_ doctor, her eyes widening with fear as she saw him, the terrified _Mei-ling_ climatologist, firing off icicles in an almost-blind panic, the one-eyed _Ana_ sniper, already snapping off a shot directly into the skull of a poorly-concealed operative, and finally the white-haired _Jack_ soldier, raising his pulse rifle, drawing a bead right on his head – and hesitating to make the killing shot.

                Behind a ballistic mask stylized into a skull, the man who now called himself Reaper allowed his rotting lips to twist into a smile.

                “You’ve got fifteen,” he growled, and his Hellfire shotguns, drawn on instinct ten seconds ago, began to roar.

+++

                Junkrat was starting to get nervous. He’d seen Roadhog like this only a handful of times, and each time it made Junkrat’s skin crawl, like seeing some ugly, brutal thing wearing his friend’s skin. Neither sullen silence nor vicious violence were unusual for Roadhog, but in such a high, constant capacity, they were alarming – even frightening. Rage, white hot and with precious few opportunities to vent, simmered off of him like rain on a firing V8.

                Roadhog had barreled through the Numbani streets, knocking over humans and omnics alike, almost trampling them in his drive forward; Junkrat had struggled to keep up, hobbling along behind him, waving and smiling enthusiastically, calling “Overwatch, coming through!” whenever he could catch his breath. Ana had been right; there were Talon troops scattered all around the city, keeping the OR15 security forces busy by causing chaos in whatever way they could, no matter how petty, from car-bombs to straight up mugging citizens on the sidewalk, stolen purses poorly matching the tactical black.

                Not one of them ever got away, though. Roadhog didn’t let them.

                He cut them down like a machine, like it was what he was born for: hook and fire, hook and fire. Whenever he ran out of scrap, he pulled them in and broke their bones or crushed them into the ground with his bare hands, sometimes slinging them out of his hook, sending them flying skull-first into walls with a sound like a plastic bag of chicken bones being smashed with a hammer.

                Junkrat had yet to fire a single shot.

                Roadhog’s path of carnage took them to a crowded square where three Talon operatives were firing their assault rifles into the air, sending humans and omnics alike scrambling behind vendor stands and trash cans. Roadhog broke into a charge, chain-hook clattering along the ground as he stretched out his left hand for the first of the mercs; his titanic fingers closed around the man’s torso, choking a crackling wheeze out of him before throwing him through a hover-car windshield. The second operative barely had time to scream before a massive right hook sent her spiraling backwards into a lamppost with a nauseating crack. The third Talon soldier actually managed to fire a few bullets, embedding harmlessly in Roadhog’s shoulderguard, before the monstrous Junker picked him up and delivered a vicious headbutt, collapsing his face and ratcheting his head back at an unnatural angle. Roadhog dropped the corpse and started to roar, but Junkrat shoved his hands in the massive Junker’s face, turning back to the crowd.

                “Uh, hello, ladies and gentlemen!” he started, forcing the most inviting smile he could muster. “It’s, um, it’s us! Your friendly neighborhood Junkers! Like on television, yeah?”

                The crowd didn’t look any less afraid, but they _did_ look more confused.

                “Really, nothin’? We were on _A Moment in Crime_ , you drongos! It was the only good episode!”

                Junkrat turned back to Roadhog, shaking his head.

                “Wasn’t that the only good one?”

                Roadhog didn’t answer, but Junkrat could feel the towering Junker staring daggers into his face. He turned back to the crowd.

                “So! We’re good guys now! Right! Regular heroes! We’re here to save you from…um…these, eh, _miscreants_!” He kicked the body at Roadhog’s feet, only to have it turn over, exposing the mangled mash its face had become. The crowd recoiled in horror and disgust, and Junkrat quickly kicked the body back over. Here he was shirtless, in baggy shorts, and sweating up a storm. “Anyhow,” he continued, barely able to maintain the smile, “we’re, uh, we’re sorta new to this, so if you’d just bear with us and _not_ ring a Divvy van, we’ll just…we’ll just be…”

                Junkrat trailed off as he saw the crowd’s eyes fixed on a single point, just above his shoulder – Roadhog’s raised scrap gun, the Junker’s arm practically vibrating with rage. Junkrat gritted his teeth, grabbed Roadhog by the mask, and yanked him down to eye-level.

                “New leaf, mate?” he pleaded. “Heroes, remember?”

                Roadhog grunted, but didn’t lower his arm. Junkrat jerked his mask again.

                “Was that all pork-pie, all that shit about savin’ the world? Hm?”

                Behind the heavily-tinted lenses, Junkrat could barely make out Roadhog’s eyes snapping back to his own, away from the trembling omnics. He shoved Roadhog’s head to the side, facing him towards a cracked TV screen showing a live news feed. A grainy helicopter image showed the two of them standing the middle of the terrified crowd, Roadhog’s gun pointed at a group of terrified people, humans and omnics together.

                A bold headline ran across the bottom of the screen: CHAOS IN NUMBANI! JUNKERS AND TALON WORKING TOGETHER?

                “Those two whackers look like heroes to you?” Junkrat spat, gesturing to themselves on-screen. Roadhog grunted again, and his death grip on the scrap gun loosened ever so slightly. “C’mon, Roadie, _please_! We got one shot at this, just one bloody shot at gettin’ this right, just gettin’ this _one thing_ right, this one damn thing and we’re heroes, mate! Bleedin’ heroes!” He was practically whispering now, hissing through clenched teeth. “But you start shootin’ these dipsticks and we’re _done_ , mate. We ain’t gonna get a third chance, dead set.”

                Roadhog’s shoulders sagged, and the gun dropped to his side. Junkrat let go of the titanic Junker’s mask and sank back down, feeling exhausted, his back aching in pain. Ratcheting his mouth into the closest facsimile of a smile he could conjure at that moment, the smaller Junker turned back to the crowd. A few had run off, both most still remained, paralyzed by fear, confusion or both.

                “Sorry about that, folks!” Junkrat apologized, raising his eyebrows just a little too high. “Still working on that ‘friendly’ bit, wouldn’t ya know!”

                “The Doomfist is secured; we’re transporting it to the Numbani Heritage Museum now! I’m sending you the coordinates,” Ana’s voice whispered in the Junkers’ earpieces. Junkrat felt a wave of relief wash over him, and he grabbed Roadhog by the wrist before addressing the crowd one last time.

                “Well, this has been fun, but we must be off! Places to go, people to save, that sort of thing, you know how it is! Anyway…cheers!”

                Pulling the lumbering Junker behind him, Junkrat took off towards the museum, hobbling as fast as he could; his grip tightened around his grenade launcher until his knuckles were white, if only to stop his hands from shaking.

                +++

                “I think…I might be a little overdressed…for this place.”

                Mei plopped herself down on the steel-plated display case as it floated slowly along the street, unzipped her parka, and wiped the sweat from her face and neck. Aleksandra slapped the muscle on her own uncovered shoulder, flexing her triceps just by bending her arm.

                “Bare arms is a good look,” she suggested, shouldering her particle cannon with ease. “Maybe you should try?”

                Mei’s overheated red face turned a shade darker, and she zipped up her parka with a groan.

                “My jacket’s got ballistic padding; the tank underneath…not so much.”

                “Why wear _anything_ without ballistic padding?” Aleksandra asked. Mei stared at her, unsure if she was joking or not.

                “Cut the chatter!” Morrison barked as he checked an alley to their left. The few remaining Talon forces had not just retreated, but completely disappeared once the strike team moved into the courtyard; since Overwatch had gotten the Doomfist back on track (with the help of biometric clearance bestowed by the major of Numbani himself), the city had gone almost deathly quiet – apart from some distant explosions. The silence seemed to set the Strike Commander even more on edge than constantly being shot at just a few minutes before. “Eyes open, mouths shut.”

                “What was that thing fighting with Talon?” Mei asked anyway as she pushed herself back to her feet.

                “He’s called Reaper, and he’s one of Talon’s top killers,” Ana answered grimly as she scanned the passing balconies through her sniper scope. Genji was hopping from building to building above them, and her barrel mirrored his cybernetic grace, checking where he was going and double-checking where he’d been. “He’s been a problem for some time.”

                “Seems more like a coward than a killer,” Aleksandra snorted. Given the relative peace, a few curious onlookers had appeared in the past few minutes, peering out from broken windows and behind parked cars, snapping photos or taking videos of the motley procession as they passed. One in particular, a young girl with dots of white face paint around her eyes, actually ventured a step into the light; she wasn’t taking pictures, instead rapidly typing something on a datapad as she watched them intently. Aleksandra smiled and raised a hand to wave, but her goodwill vanished as she saw a figure behind the girl: a tall, spindly, omnic in an impeccable suit, its ocular units a bright caution-yellow.

                Aleksandra’s trigger-finger twitched, and she turned away from the girl and her bodyguard with a scowl.

                “Cowardice’s got nothing to do with it, he just doesn’t waste time on fights he can’t win,” the Strike Commander grunted. “Gotta feel fear to be a coward, and there’s nothing behind that mask but smoke and ha—”

                A shotgun blast shattered the quiet of the street, followed by a loud clank as Genji hit the ground, his left arm smoking with buckshot.

                “Ambush!” Reinhardt began to yell, but his warning was cut off as the street turned into a target range for the Talon agents that had been lying in wait. The Overwatch team dove to the ground, deploying shields and rolling behind what little cover wasn’t already shredded by streams of assault fire, crawling along next to the display case as it miraculously continued to move even as dozens of bullets pelted its hull. Mei squeezed herself underneath the hovering display case, flinching as she felt the impacts of projectiles nicking the soles of her boots.

                “Athena, how far to the museum?” Ana asked, covering her head with her rifle as she rolled between two cars.

                “Less than a block; a bridge up ahead may provide cover.”

                A blast of buckshot impacted against the Doomfist case, cracking the thick glass just an inch, and a peal of mirthless laughter sounded out over the ballistic chorus of gunfire surrounding them. Catching the living shadow out of the corner of her eye, Mei erected an ice wall between him and the case, but a split second later, Reaper appeared on top of it, seeming to rise out of the ice itself in a smoky eruption. Reaper fired again with both shotguns, and she heard the glass crack further. Mei felt a scream rising up in her throat, but forced it into words.

                “Commander, he’s—”

                A fully automatic stream of pulse fire shredded across the top of the ice wall, and the Talon leader turned to smoke, the blazing blue rounds tearing through him harmlessly. The Strike Commander rose to his feet, ignoring the bullets flying all around him, roaring in anger as he emptied the clip; Aleksandra dropped her particle shield on him just in time to deflect a fresh volley, but the old soldier was oblivious to anything but his target.

                With a horrible noise that might’ve been a laugh, Reaper’s corporeal form liquefied, sinking down and slithering back behind Mei’s still-erect ice wall; Morrison broke into a sprint, hurdling the display case and sliding across the hole-ridden hood of a smoking car. Realizing where he was going, Mei defrosted the wall just in time to see the Strike Commander bash through the crumbling ice and disappear up a flight of stairs after a set of inky black tendrils.

                Something on an animal level in Mei’s mind tilted to the side, and she started to feel like her lungs weren’t working anymore.

                “H-he left us!” she whimpered. “He just left us!”

                Ana spat something about ‘worthless old men’ that Mei couldn’t quite make out from underneath the transport display, but then she started barking orders in a voice clear and ringing, like no sound she’d ever heard the sniper make before.

                “Reinhardt! Shield on the payload! Ziegler! Get Genji up! Zaryanova! Barrier on me in five seconds! Mei! Wall off the street behind us!”

                Mei saw Ana’s head poke down underneath the transport, her one good eye ablaze with purpose, jaw set like the Judgment Day itself was upon them.

                “ _Now!_ ”

                As if a fraction of that battle-forged determination had passed directly between them in just a look, Mei’s panic disappeared and she fired on instinct, cutting off a line of Talon agents advancing from the rear. A smile flickered across the old sniper’s features, and she nodded.

                “Good girl. Now get out and _fight_.”

                As Mei scrambled out from underneath the display transport, Ana rose – and her rifle rose with her, sighting along her shoulder with a grace and practice that the phrase ‘muscle memory’ wouldn’t do justice. Aleksandra’s particle bubble closed around her, and she went to work.

                The particle shield, a shimmering bubble of hexagonal projections that stood as a testament to humanity’s ability to bend science to whatever ends they damn well pleased, lasted only two seconds, but to the Talon soldiers on the balcony above Ana Amari, it seemed much, much longer. With almost superhuman speed, Ana snapped off shot after shot, punching dart after dart of biotic toxins into the heads and necks of enemies she couldn’t even see apart from the orange-white strobe of their muzzleflashes. She didn’t _need_ to see them, of course, not really; there’s only so many ways to hold an assault rifle, and from the barking barrel, it’s just a quick angle up to the head – simple geometry, as it were. Captain Ana Amari did such calculations on an unconscious level, the same way someone else might think about the process of breathing. Four Talon agents dropped before the particle barrier did the same, and two more met their end as they retreated back into the recesses of their spider holes, away from the sand-weathered Eye of Horus and the unstoppable judgment it dealt out.

                Aleksandra activated her own barrier and swept her particle cannon across the street; at maximum power after absorbing so many bullets meant for Ana, the beam was a merciless torch, slicing through street signs and Talon operatives alike. Back on her feet, Mei joined her endothermic spray with Aleksandra’s cannon-fire, slowing down and freezing those villains too slow to get away before the massive pink-white beam shattered them completely. There was no escape, only retaliation.

                The balance of the fight tipped back into Overwatch’s favor, and they rallied, climbing atop the payload and taking cover behind Reinhardt’s shield like a ballistic umbrella. Foot by foot, the five of them moved the transport along; by the time the walkway between buildings loomed overhead, even Mei was starting to feel her confidence return.

                _This is the way it’s supposed to be_ , she thought. _No fear, just us saving the d—_

                “Mei! Zaryanova! Keep the payload moving; we’ll hold them here!”

                Mei’s confidence evaporated.

                “What?”

                “It’s just around the corner,” Ana pointed out, taking up position behind a column. The Talon forces were pinned down on the other side of the underpass, unable to move up through the coverless ramp the team had just come up. It was an ideal chokepoint, Mei saw – if there were enough hands to defend it. Reinhardt was blocking off the majority of the street, guffawing and taunting mercilessly as the frustrated mercs were held at bay by a storm of shurikens and Dr. Ziegler’s surprisingly-accurate potshots. Mei looked over her shoulder; the museum courtyard _did_ look inviting, not least of all because of its combination of well-trimmed shrubbery and visible lack of murderous Talon agents. Surely she could do _this_.

                “Come on, comrade,” Aleksandra said, patting her on the back as she walked by. Mei followed her, taking up a position on the opposite side of the display case – and a deep breath.

                The next couple of minutes were some of the tensest in Mei-Ling Zhou’s life; every hot breeze made her jump, every rustling bush or errant shadow got a free icicle. Still, the gunfire was distant, and Reinhardt was still laughing; Aleksandra couldn’t stifle a snort.

                “Is it always going to be like this?” Mei asked the more-experienced soldier. She shrugged.

                “You get used to it.”

                “I’m not sure I want to,” Mei sighed, feeling her heart pounding in her chest in spite of the relative calm.

                A second later, the transport made a pleasant chiming sound, and it came to a stop before the steps of the Numbani Heritage Museum, a tall, stately building with towering windows that stretched up its sides, and fluttering banners advertising the new Doomfist exhibit. Inside, Mei and Aleksandra could make out the peering faces of frightened tourists – and one very relieved curator.

                “So do we take it in now? Do they come out and get it?” Mei asked, waving to the people inside and beaming her brightest smile.

                “I don’t know,” Aleksandra answered, nodding tacitly. “We should probably take it inside. It is still dangerous out here.”

                “Now,” a hoarse voice growled behind them, “you die.”

                Ana heard the shotgun blasts, put her hand to her earpiece, and screamed an order on a channel the others couldn’t hear.

                Aleksandra and Mei both fell back, staggered by the concussive Hellfire blasts of Reaper’s shotguns against their particle barriers. The projections dropped a split-second later, leaving the two of them out in the open, facing the black-cloaked killer alone. He looked a little more haggard, with a line of nasty impacts marring his ballistic vest, and ugly dagger slashes covering his hooded coat, but the primary object of the two Overwatch agents’ attention was the shotgun barrels aiming directly at them.

                A wall of ice popped up in front of Mei a nanosecond before Reaper fired, but Aleksandra caught the offhand blast in her chest, knocking her to her knees as her thick armor absorbed the buckshot but not the force. She fired back as she fell, cursing in Russian as the beam shot out, but her aim was thrown off and Reaper didn’t even bother going incorporeal, instead just spinning away and firing again. One blast caught the Russian’s kneeguard, tipping her over, while the other shattered the ice wall to reveal – nothing.

                Mei’s endothermic blast hit Reaper from the side, and his movement went slow even as he turned to retaliate. Mei smiled and switched firing modes, launching an icicle directly into his shoulder, eliciting a garbled howl of pain from behind the skull mask. She readied a second shot, but the Talon leader turned to reddish-black smoke, and the icicle sailed through his face like a hand through mist. He feinted to the left, turned solid again, and backhanded the now-frightened climatologist across the courtyard, sending her flying into Aleksandra, bowling her over in the process.

                Reaper stalked across the pavement towards them, tossing his shotguns to the ground and producing another set from deep within his cloak, shaking his head slowly the whole time.

                “Heard Overwatch was back,” he snarled, making some awful coughing noise that could’ve passed for a chuckle. The hole in his shoulder where Mei’s icicle had landed dripped sticky black ichor, but the otherworldly killer didn’t seem to notice. “But you’re not Overwatch, you’re just a bunch of broken old soldiers and kids too stupid to see the truth. You’re not heroes. You’re _no one_.”

                Mei’s mind screamed _run_ but every muscle and joint was locked in place.

                Aleksandra, her chest and leg on fire with pain, wondered about the chances of dodging a shotgun blast at point-blank range.

                Reaper raised both shotguns, and began to _glow red_.

                “And now, you’re d—”

                With a rusty _shink_ , a massive butcher-hook latched onto Reaper’s waist, and pulled him off his feet. The Talon agents was yanked back into a cloud of frag grenades that detonated on impact, blasting chunks off of his body, leaving great gaping puffs of smoke where his armor had been. The chain spun in a circle, building momentum, before flinging him against a far wall, where the cement buckled under the impact. Reaper fell to the ground with a sepulchral groan, dropping both his shotguns in the process.

                “You first, spooky!” Junkrat taunted as he strode confidently into the courtyard, chest out like he’d just won the lottery. Roadhog followed behind, trying to shake the inky black residue off of his hook, but having little success.

                Mei had never been so happy to see that crooked smile in all her life.

                Aleksandra had never been more furious.

                “What the hell are you two doing here?!” she roared, pulling her particle cannon up at the two Junkers.

                “Oh, just bein’ heroes, y’know, the usual,” Junkrat said, checking the ‘nails’ on his prosthetic hand, undeterred. “Seemed like y’could’ve used the he—”

                Roadhog rocked back on his heels, clutching at deep red gashes torn across his shoulder.

                “Enough!” Reaper growled, staggering to his feet, sweeping a smoking shotgun towards the others. Smoke poured out of a dozen holes in his body, and half his head was just _gone_ , but still he lived – or at least stood. Through a hole in the skull mask, a bleeding-black mouth with far too many teeth spit out an inky blot that sizzled on the pavement. “You think you can stop Talon? You think you can stop what’s _coming_? You can’t even work together without trying to kill each other!”

                In a moment, Aleksandra’s rage pivoted from the Junkers to the smoking Talon assassin.

                “Perhaps not,” she conceded, turning her particle cannon towards him. “But we _can_ stop _you._ Mei, wall!”

                She fired a particle charge a split-second before issuing the command, lifting Reaper from his feet. The ice wall shot up underneath him, slamming into his body with a sound like a bag of chips being slammed against a wall.

                “Roadhog, chain!”

                He flew into the air and drifted for a moment, like a malevolent black cloud, before Roadhog’s chain-hook latched around his shoulder and dragged him to the ground, partially breaking the ice wall, and burying the Talon agent in what was left of it.

                “Junkrat! Whatever!”

                Reaper, mask shattered and oozing black slime, looked up just in time to see a concussion mine sailing through the air directly at his face.

                “You’ll like this one, spooky!”

                When the smoke had cleared, only a few black wisps remained, evaporating in the Nigerian sun as the last traces of Reaper disappeared.

                An audible cheer went up from inside the museum, and the doors flew open as tourists and visitors spilled down the stairs, cheering and taking pictures. Roadhog stiffened at the oncoming deluge of humans and omnics, but he felt Junkrat’s hand on his arm.

                “Just smile and wave,” the smaller Junker hissed through a clenched smile.

                “They can’t see me smiling.”

                “Do it anyway, big guy. We’re heroes now.”

                Omnics and humans, reaching, touching, hugging, and cheering, surrounded them, swept around them like a grateful flood. Mei was practically lifted off her feet, laughing along with them, feeling more alive in that moment than the past year. Aleksandra nodded respectfully, shaking hands – even with omnics – and allowing the celebrants to hug her, even as she stood formal as a statue. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched how the two Junkers passed over the omnics even more than she did, almost ignoring them, and wondered about some of the things she’d read in their files.

                Somehow the crowd grew even louder as the rest of the squad rounded the corner from the underpass, tired, and sporting a few more scratches than before, but alive. Reinhardt swept up those close enough in a towering embrace, while Genji and Dr. Ziegler thanked each celebrant one by one. Ana’s arms were full as she supported the Strike Commander by the shoulder. Whatever had transpired between the old soldier and the Talon leader, it appeared that Jack Morrison had gotten the worst of it: half his mask clawed away, his jacket shredded, and chunks of his body armor missing, he was bleeding but still breathing, and Ana quietly administered a biotic injection when she saw there were civilians to impress. Hiding his limp, Morrison shrugged off Ana’s help and made his way over to the two Junkers, ignoring the outstretched hands of those around him.

                “I don’t even want to know, do I?” he asked, his old cracked lips curling into something almost approaching a smile.

                “Probably not,” Junkrat admitted.

                “Nah,” Roadhog added.

                The Strike Commander shook his head, and radioed Athena.

                A few minutes later, the air was filled with the muffled hum of idling dropship engines as it pulled into position overhead. There were a few pleasantries exchanged between the Morrison and the museum curator, a fastidious man in an expensive suit now stained with sweat, and the Doomfist was successfully removed from its case, none the worse for wear. With some reluctance, the team climbed back into the dropship, waving to the still-cheering crowds; a number of local and national news teams had just made it into the courtyard, but Ana knew better than to stick around for an interview. With a loud warning ‘ping,’ the dropship lifted off, giving the news teams what they _really_ came for: a great view of the Overwatch logo in the Numbani skies.

                Roadhog watched the city shrink through a window, staring blankly out at the cheering crowds and the raised hands, flesh and metal together. His grip on the handhold along the wall tightened, denting the flight-grade metal ever so slightly.

                “The humans who live there are fools to trust the omnics,” Aleksandra remarked, joining him in watching the gleaming towers sink into the clouds as the dropship climbed. “They will see.”

                Roadhog grunted, and although she had yet to truly decipher what each nondescript noise _actually_ meant the way Junkrat could, Aleksandra fancied it was an agreement.

                Mei was staring off into space, still imagining the cheers of the crowd, when Junkrat practically fell into the seat beside her, startling her out of the reverie. She scowled at him.

                “Uh, listen, Doc Zhou,” he said, twiddling his thumbs like a child in trouble, “I, uh, I wanted to say ‘sorry’ for what I, uh, said the other night when I was rotten.”

                “You certainly _were_ rotten,” she agreed, refusing to make eye contact. Junkrat blanched.

                “No, I meant ‘rotten’ like ‘off me face.’”

                Mei’s face scrunched up in confusion.

                “Like ‘drunk’ rotten.”

                “Well, you were both.”

                Junkrat’s eye twitched, but he took a deep breath.

                “I didn’t—I just—anyway, I just came over to say ‘sorry.’ I apologize. I’m sorry.”

                Mei finally turned and looked at him. In the red warning light, she had to admit he _did_ look sort of cute in a ‘lost, mangy, mongrel dog on the doorstep’ kind of way.

                “Apology accepted,” she said with a smugly polite smile.

                “Oh, whew,” Junkrat said, wiping his brow in relief. Mei couldn’t tell if he was exaggerating for comedic effect or not. “They really are ace, though. I mean, that’s a corker of a pair you got.”

                She jumped to her feet.

                “Are you _serious_ right now?!”

                He jumped to his feet.

                “I’m just tryin’ to give you a compliment, you frigid little gremlin!”

                Cursing in Mandarin, she stomped off to the other side of the dropship and sat down, furiously fiddling with the machinery of her drone and ignoring everyone else as hard as she could. Junkrat plopped himself back down, glared out a window, and wondered where he went wrong.

                The Strike Commander turned back from the spat to the cockpit where Ana was piloting the dropship home; she looked tired, and it would be early afternoon before they got back without Tracer’s jumping capabilities, but she still refused Athena’s autopilot. The grizzled soldier smiled, and slide his chair up behind hers.

                “I could fly, you know,” he suggested. Her cheeks rose.

                “I’m the better pilot,” Ana stated.

                “I can fly in a straight line,” he shot back with false offense. “It’s not hard.”

                “You also lost a fight today,” she murmured, with less joviality, but more empathy. He looked at the tears in his armor; the flesh was healed already, but the clothing would take longer to repair. “How was he?”

                “Same as always,” the Strike Commander sighed. “He almost kills me, but doesn’t. I almost kill him…” He trailed off.

                “Why do you think they let us win today?” Ana asked, changing the subject. “We were outnumbered. _Massively_ outnumbered, but they kept pulling back. _He_ kept pulling back.”

                “I don’t know,” Morrison admitted, “and to be honest, I don’t really care. As far as a grand reopening goes, this could’ve gone worse. A _lot_ worse.” He turned back to the dropship loading bay. “Especially with those two in the mix. You seen the news footage?”

                “I’ve been flying the plane, so no.”

                “It got pretty tense down there. Roadhog almost…I don’t know what he was planning on doing, but it looks like Junkrat talked him down.”

                Ana Amari’s eyebrow rose.

                “Interesting,” she said. “Any word from London?”

                “Not yet, but Winston said he might not have time to update the old lines, so that’s nothing we don’t already know.”

                “You think Talon would try two attacks in one day?” Ana asked. There was an answer they both knew, and an answer they both hoped for, and both were different.

                “I hope not,” the old soldier said, leaning on the dashboard. “I hope Talon is as small as we think they are, and that they wasted a significant contingent of their ground troops today on a poorly-planned assault by a murderous psychopath that’s _definitely_ dead right now.”

                “That’s more hope than I’m used to from you,” Ana said with a smile.

                “We got the Doomfist to the museum, and nobody died. Maybe I’m just feeling optimistic.”

                They both looked out the cockpit window and watched as the sky darkened over the sea.

+++

                “Ogundimu! Phone!”

                Akande Ogundimu emerged from his cell and walked down the block unharried and unhurried. The block was mostly empty, but the few convicts still hanging around gave him plenty of space, some even bowing their heads as he passed. All his life, it had been like this: the weak parting before the strong, desperate to stay out of his path, to stand in his wake. He had never known if it was fear or respect, but he’d long since given up wondering or even caring; the motivations mattered little if the effect was the same. Such was the confidence that came from being born of greatness.

                He crossed into the commons area, and realized where the rest of the prisoners had gone: they were glued to the few television sets suspended well out of reach and locked inside plexiglass cases. Every set was tuned to a different news channel, but it was the same story; a black-clad terrorist group had descended on Numbani in an attempt to steal the Doomfist as it was being transported to an exhibit at the Heritage Museum, but they had been thwarted by the most unlikely saviors: a ragtag group of soldiers fighting underneath the Overwatch banner that had cut through the terrorist forces like a plasma knife through titanium and had brought the Doomfist safely to its exhibit. Still photos and shaky handheld videos captured the intense fighting on the streets, and dozens of overpaid talking heads pointlessly debated the significance of such a return. Most of the prisoners spit, booed, or otherwise jeered the news, but a surprising number of them seemed interested, even excited. Akande Ogundimu walked past the TVs without reacting at all. He had a phone call to take.

                The guard handed the phone to him at arms’ length. It had been months since Ogundimu had maimed a guard, but they all remembered, and none of them wanted to be next.

                “A-an Erik Claudin for you, Mr. Ogundimu,” the guard stammered before practically sprinting away. Akande Ogundimu turned his back to the wardens and put the phone to his ear.

                “Akande Ogundimu speaking,” he answered with a voice like still, deep water.

                “It’s done,” came the rasp from the other end.

                “Were you successful?” he asked, dropping volume to almost a whisper.

                “Gauntlet’s in the museum and the good guys are riding high.”

                “Good. Have you obt—”

                “Lot of men died today, _Doomfist_.” The interruption came sharp and nasty, making the title sound like an insult. Akande Ogundimu’s free hand curled slowly into a fist. “A _lot_ of men.”

                “Is that sentiment I hear?” he shot back, his upper lip twisting just slightly.

                “You know it isn’t,” came the response after a second of silence.

                “Good. Have you obtained the component?”

                Instead of a verbal reply, he heard a noise, a blurt of corrupted omnicode, a garbled second of nonsense that sounded like a malfunctioning door. It meant nothing verbally, but his vision blurred immediately, his eyes going in and out of focus, his fingers starting to twitch.

                “When can I expect your visit?” he asked, putting a hand on the phone to steady himself.

                “Five seconds until retrace,” a quiet voice, bleeding from an unsecured earpiece on the other end of the line warned.

                “Two days.”

                “Bring something for me to change into,” he said; a command, not a request.

                “No.”

                The line went dead.

                Akande Ogundimu hung up the phone and walked quickly back to his own cell; he maintained a semblance of normalcy until he crossed the threshold, and then he collapsed, his cybernetics spasming and firing randomly as the aurally-transmitted virus battled the security systems installed by the state after his imprisonment, limiting the prosthetics to normal human feats instead of the devastating strength and speed they naturally possessed. There was a camera in his cell, as in all cells, but his had been deactivated long ago, a favor for paying off a guard’s sick daughter’s hospital bill. Akande Ogundimu allowed his world to go black, trusting that he would not be disturbed in the midst of his seizure. Fear and respect made a powerful shield even against the ambitious.

                When he regained consciousness, it was as if the world itself was brighter and more beautiful; even the pallid walls of his cell seemed vibrant with color, the sterile prison air fresh as a breath of spring. Carefully, he placed his right hand against the thick block wall of his cell, and started to push. After only a few seconds, he heard the cement crack beneath his knuckles, and when he removed his hand, he saw the wall had already begun to buckle, his fist leaving a clear imprint on material that a sledgehammer could not make a mark upon.

                For the first time since his imprisonment began, Akande Ogundimu allowed himself to smile.

                Then he began to punch.

+++

                The sun was low in the sky by the time the dropship had landed; the weary agents within toddled out, unsteady on solid ground again. They wandered straight for the mess hall, some talking, some silent, all hungry; the dropship’s in-flight rations were lacking, and they had earned themselves a feast. That day, for the first time, they all sat beside one another, pushing tables and raising glasses together. Even Jack and Ana, who still couldn’t raise London, eventually joined them in the cafeteria, bonding over the small strip of Hell they had all walked through together that day. They were having so much fun that they barely paid attention to the television showing the day’s news above the bar – not until just a little past 5PM.

                It started as a wave of astonishment as the Overwatch agents fell silent; drinks dropped to the floor, food untouched on plates. With every replay, the shock deepened, becoming enveloping, devouring any sense of accomplishment and replacing it with a numb powerlessness. A few people had caught traces of the rooftop battle that preceded the terrible event: shaky videos showed two figures, one tall and lithe, the other small and glowing blue, firing at one another, leaping from balustrade to bannister, but mostly the footage was of the awful moment as Tekhartha Mondatta fell backwards into his security transport, a smoking, high-caliber bullethole piercing his chassis.

                Eventually the footage was relegated to only being shown 20 times an hour, but it wasn’t out of a sense of respect: there were other horrors to show. Riots spread out from Kings Row like a virus, engulfing the entire city in looting, burning, and clashing as anti-omnic sympathizers took the Shambali leader’s assassination as an excuse attack any omnic they saw – and Mondatta supporters fought back with equal fury. London fell into chaos as the police became overwhelmed by the sheer number of rioters, and the Queen herself declared a state of emergency, but there were just too many fires to contain.

                Overwatch’s return had been eclipsed almost entirely at first, except for a few of the talking heads asking accusatory questions: where were they that night? Why hadn’t they stopped the assassination? Did this new Overwatch have anti-omnic leanings, and did they _choose_ to stay their hand instead of providing additional security? The questions only multiplied, growing more and more aggressive until people were screaming at one another on television, each pundit desperate to savage the ‘new, failed Overwatch’ more than the last.

                The wire from London came back online at half past seven, and even though Ana had it transmitted to her private channel, everyone in the cafeteria could hear the sound-bleed of Lena sobbing until the sniper ran out of the room, headed for central command.

                Junkrat sat down next to Roadhog on a leather couch and handed him a glass of beer.

                “So much for bein’ heroes,” he sighed, and held up his glass. Roadhog clinked his own against it.

                “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks you SO MUCH for reading! This chapter took a billion years because, I'll be honest, I lost interest in Overwatch for a while. I love the game, the setting, and the characters, but the playerbase...well, not so much. Anyway, this chapter's been gestating in my head for quite some time, which is why it's both so damn long and incorporates already-released media to 'fit' itself into the grey 'canon/not-canon' area that I like to write in. In some ways, waiting so long and having all the Doomfist stuff happen was a hassle because I had to re-do some stuff, but it also gave me a way to further 'anchor' the story into the game's evolving storyline.
> 
> I'll be honest, I can't tell you when the next chapter is going to be - I'm hoping to do more character-on-character development and less 'shooty shooty bang bang' next part, although I DO love writing 'shooty shooty bang bang' stuff. Still, it's not what you or I are here for, it's the story of these four characters and how I met your mother. But without that last part, jk. Thank you so much for being SO patient with me, and as always, please leave feedback, negative or positive; I'm always trying to improve.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Obviously, this is only the first part of what's going to be a multi-part series; I have no idea how many chapters it'll be when it's done, but I do have a pretty clear idea of what's going to happen between now and then. See you at the next chapter!


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